Update, Sept. 23: Yan Wentao formally joined DeepSeek on Sept. 21 and reported for work in Hangzhou, 36Kr reported, ending a CFO vacancy that dated to the company’s founding.
DeepSeek is hiring Yan Wentao, a partner at Hillhouse’s venture arm GL Ventures, as its first chief financial officer as it prepares for a possible initial public offering, Reuters reported.
The hire follows a Reuters exclusive earlier in the month that DeepSeek had brought in CITIC Securities to prepare for a domestic listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market.
Who Yan is
Yan was born in 1991 and graduated from Fudan University, according to 36Kr’s Investment Community. He worked at Tencent Investment and H Capital from 2013 to 2020 before joining GL Ventures, and his deals include MiniMax, Zhipu AI, ByteDance, J&T Express and Webull. He has said he began researching large models in 2020 and turned to embodied AI in 2023.
Founder Liang Wenfeng, who built his fortune at the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, has long favored young hires, and several young partners from top venture firms had competed for the CFO job over the previous two months, 36Kr reported.
From research lab to listing candidate
DeepSeek drew global attention in early 2025 with open-source reasoning models that rivaled leading U.S. systems. It long ran on Liang’s money but has since turned to outside capital: in June it closed a fundraise of more than $7.4 billion that made it China’s most valuable AI startup, The Wall Street Journal reported, with Liang personally contributing a large share. A second round, with industrial investors such as SMIC’s private equity arm, was nearing completion in September, according to 36Kr, which said the team had been screening limited partners and turning many investors away.
A listing would bring the audits, internal controls and disclosure requirements that a CFO normally oversees, work a company funded mostly by its founder hasn’t needed until now.
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