As news spread that DeepSeek is about to restart its second funding round, people were surprised to discover that Zhong Shanshan, China's richest man, had long invested in the large-model AI company. DeepSeek began its first funding round in April and completed the deal in June. The first-round investor lineup is powerful, including state-backed institutions, internet companies, investment funds and industrial capital.
Digging into the equity chains of the participating institutions, a low-profile name surfaced - Zhong Shanshan. Among DeepSeek's impressive investor list is an entity called Hangzhou Chengli Business Consulting Partnership. Business-registration records show that about 5.02% of Hangzhou Chengli is held by Tianjin Huiqi Management Consulting Partnership, while Tianjin Huixing Equity Investment Partnership holds 53.33% of Tianjin Huiqi, and 43.7% of Tianjin Huixing is in turn held by Guanzi Equity Investment (Lishui) Partnership. The actual controller of these companies is Zhong Shanshan, through Guanzi Private Fund Management (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., part of the Yangshengtang system.
Through these layers of investment relationships, Zhong Shanshan indirectly poured about 354 million yuan into DeepSeek. Notably, Tianjin Huixing and Tianjin Huiqi were established in June and May this year respectively - highly coinciding with the timing of DeepSeek's first funding round - and were evidently prepared for this investment.
Zhong Shanshan's cautious investment in DeepSeek can be traced back to the most successful investment case of his business career. In 2001, he acquired 95% of Wantai Biological for 17.1 million yuan. At the time, Wantai was engaged in in-vitro diagnostic reagents and vaccines, but its performance was mediocre. It was not until 2020 that it launched the first domestically made HPV vaccine, breaking the foreign monopoly and quickly capturing the market. That same year, Wantai went public, with its market value at one point exceeding 100 billion yuan. Relying on his two listed companies, Wantai Biological and Nongfu Spring, Zhong Shanshan became China's richest man. Since then, his investment focus has turned to scientific fields such as biomedicine and new materials.
Today, Zhong Shanshan seems to hope to prove once again his keen insight into technology trends by investing in DeepSeek. This is not his first foray into AI: filings for the Hong Kong listing of Lightelligence, a photoelectric hybrid computing company, show that Guanzi Private Fund Management (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. was once a shareholder. In addition, the Qiantang New Materials Laboratory and the Kunshan Gewu Zhizhi Fund, both under the Yangshengtang system controlled by Zhong Shanshan, have also invested frequently in technology. Since its establishment in 2024, the former has invested in more than a dozen companies, betting heavily on new materials; the latter has also invested in a batch of hard-tech companies.
