DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence unicorn company, proposed a "no poaching" precondition to potential investors during its recent first round of external financing, which attracted attention in the industry. According to reports, in a four-hour video roadshow with potential investors in May this year, Liang Wenfeng, the founder of Deep Search, made it clear that a condition of the investment agreement was that investment institutions were not allowed to poach employees from Deep Search, nor were they to encourage their employees to go out and start their own businesses.
According to reports, this financing is the first time Deepin has opened its equity to the outside world since its establishment. The total financing is approximately US$7.4 billion, and the company’s valuation exceeds US$50 billion, making the Hangzhou-based startup one of the most highly valued “pure AI” startups in China. Since its establishment, Deep Search has been known for focusing on basic research and delaying commercialization. It has long refused external financing invitations. However, in the past year, after many of the company's core researchers left for competitors, Deep Search began to adjust its strategy and launch large-scale fundraising to consolidate its technology and talent advantages.
Deep Search's progress in model development has attracted global attention. The report mentioned that after surprising the market with its low-cost inference model last year, the startup once again launched a new generation of artificial intelligence model in April this year that claimed to significantly reduce costs, hoping to narrow the gap in competition with its American counterparts. In a shopping mall exhibition area in Hangzhou, the in-depth product display also attracted many people to stop and take photos, reflecting its popularity and topicality in China.
However, as Chinese technology giants compete for general artificial intelligence (AGI), the competition for top talent has become increasingly fierce. The report believes that the inclusion of "no poaching" in the financing terms of Deep Search reflects that the competition for engineers and researchers in the industry has evolved from "hidden competition" to an "open battlefield." For investment institutions that want to deeply participate in China's AI track, this unusual clause also means that in addition to capital investment, they need to exercise more self-restraint on the flow of talents.
Public information shows that Deepin Search has experienced the resignation of many core technical personnel in the past few months. For example, the report stated that Luo Fuli, a core contributor to the Deep Search V3 model, left the company at the end of last year and became the head of the Xiaomi MiMo team. Subsequently, a number of models launched by Xiaomi were accused of "exceeding" the performance of deep search in several public benchmark tests. This is also regarded as the epitome of Chinese Internet and hardware manufacturers' comprehensive increase in the field of large models.
The competition for talent is not a problem for Deep Search alone. The "poaching war" among other Chinese technology giants is equally fierce. Another report from 36Kr in March this year quoted sources as saying that two key AI developers from ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin, had recently switched jobs to Tencent. The Information reported this week that Tencent has invested $20 million in a newly established AI research laboratory founded by Lin Juyang, the former head of Alibaba’s Qwen project.
Lin Juyang posted on social platforms in March this year that he had resigned from Alibaba’s Tongyi team. The report quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that within Alibaba, there was a heated discussion around the positioning of the enterprise collaboration tool "DingTalk" in the group's artificial intelligence strategy, which eventually led to the replacement of the person in charge of this application for the enterprise market. Bloomberg’s previous report pointed out that this move reflects Alibaba’s continued adjustments in the integration of cloud computing and AI businesses to better cope with pressure from domestic and foreign peers.
At the same time, Chinese technology companies are also actively recruiting researchers with backgrounds in cutting-edge international laboratories. According to reports, Tencent poached Yao Shunyu from OpenAI last year, who currently serves as Tencent’s chief AI scientist. Both Yao Shunyu and Deep Search founder Liang Wenfeng have publicly emphasized that China’s breakthrough path in artificial intelligence lies in “fully investing” in the research and development of general artificial intelligence and striving to create intelligent systems that are at human level or even surpass human beings.
As of press time, Deepin Search, Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance have not officially responded to media reports. However, judging from capital layout, team changes and public statements, these Chinese technology giants without exception regard AGI as the core battlefield for the next stage of competition. In this context, in-depth exploration of the practice of "banning talent poaching" as a prerequisite for financing may become a typical case in the evolution of talent protection and competition rules in China's AI industry.