The race to secure investment shares in AI powerhouse DeepSeek is proving to be an intense and costly affair, with intermediaries demanding hefty upfront fees and significant revenue shares. Reports indicate that some channels are charging investors an 18% upfront fee and a 35% share of future profits, a stark contrast to the typical 2% annual management fees seen in the fund industry.
Aggressive Fee Structures and Strict Scrutiny
Under these terms, an investor committing 100 million yuan would first pay 18 million yuan as an upfront fee. Should the investment yield returns, another 35% of the profits would be claimed. Even with these substantial costs, securing a DeepSeek share is not guaranteed. The company conducts rigorous identity checks on potential investors, with some individuals facing a minimum investment threshold of 100 million yuan.
Furthermore, DeepSeek insists on a comprehensive ‘look-through’ verification of all limited partners (LPs) behind investing funds, aiming to prevent shares from falling into unknown hands. Investments are subject to a strict five-year lock-up period, during which the shares cannot be transferred. With the exception of the National AI Industry Investment Fund, most external investors will not have voting rights or board seats, only the right to share in financial returns based on their investment proportion.
Market Chaos: Fake Shares and Dubious Intermediaries
The high demand has also spawned a market rife with fraudulent shares and unscrupulous intermediaries. An entity named Jiaxing Shiyuan claimed to have secured around 10 billion yuan in investment shares. However, its representative, He Wei, later clarified to ‘Caijing’ magazine that he had never interacted with DeepSeek and was not the CFO of the renowned quantitative trading firm, Huzhihuama (often referred to as ‘Hifang Lianghua’ in Chinese reports).
Following the first round of financing, neither Jiaxing Shiyuan nor another prominent fundraising entity, Qingdao Haozheng, appeared on the final investor list. In a bid to gain access to shares, one investor reportedly paid a 5 million yuan ‘meeting fee’ in hopes of meeting DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng. The investor traveled to Hangzhou two days in advance and waited at a hotel near DeepSeek’s headquarters but ultimately failed to meet Liang and later managed to reclaim the 500,000 yuan.
The market has also seen numerous individuals posing as intermediaries, leveraging personal connections such as ‘childhood friends,’ ‘relatives,’ or ‘Zhejiang University classmates’ to vouch for the legitimacy of investment channels. However, these purported relationships are often difficult to verify.
Echoes of Past Frenzy: The case of Moonshot AI
A similar situation unfolded during Moonshot AI’s (YueZhiAnMian) funding round. On August 14th, Moonshot AI issued a statement denying the existence of so-called ‘friend funds,’ ‘special channels,’ ‘old share quotas,’ or ‘official agents.’ The company also announced that it had reported these market irregularities to the police.
DeepSeek’s Stellar Growth and Future Prospects
DeepSeek, founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the founder of Huzhihuama, has experienced remarkable growth. The company reportedly completed its first round of external financing in June 2026, raising over 50 billion yuan and achieving a post-investment valuation exceeding 338 billion yuan. Key investors in this round included Liang Wenfeng himself (20 billion yuan), Tencent (10 billion yuan), CATL (5 billion yuan), NetEase, JD.com, and IDG Capital (3 billion yuan each), as well as the National AI Industry Investment Fund (1 billion yuan).
According to a ‘Caijing’ report from August 5th, DeepSeek has initiated its second round of financing, aiming to raise another 50 billion yuan with a pre-financing valuation of approximately 500 billion yuan. For the first seven months of this year, DeepSeek’s revenue reached about 475 million yuan, roughly ten times its projected full-year revenue for 2025. During the same period, the company’s expenditure on AI infrastructure, primarily for server leases, chip purchases, and other computing equipment, stood at approximately 11 billion yuan, compared to about 1.2 billion yuan for the entirety of 2025.
