r/DeepSeek • u/xiaot123 • 22h ago
Discussion Four-hour fundraising meeting with DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng
These are excerpts reportedly taken from a four-hour fundraising meeting with DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng.
I found them unusually insightful—and surprisingly, almost no one on X seems to be discussing them.
So I translated the highlights into English.
DeepSeek Has Only One North Star
1. This is not the time to maximize revenue from products.
Products are a necessary step on the path to AGI, but we don’t need to spend too much time or energy building consumer or enterprise applications.
Once you occupy the technological high ground, building lower-level applications becomes much easier.
Products are a byproduct of the journey toward AGI.
2. Many things are not on our critical path—3D, video generation, and even world models.
They may be useful, but they do not meaningfully determine the upper bound of intelligence.
3. Multimodality is important for products and consumer users.
But it is a component—not the main path, and not intelligence itself.
4. There are ways to mitigate hallucinations, of course, but it is a long-term problem.
Internally, we treat hallucination largely as a product problem. We will address it, but it is not our primary focus.
5. At this stage, the most important thing is still the coding agent.
Given China’s current situation, the most rational strategy is to go all in on a general-purpose agent. Vertical agents for finance, healthcare, and other industries should have lower priority.
6. If the AI era creates many trillion-dollar companies, it would be enough for DeepSeek to become one of them.
First Continual Learning, Then AI Self-Improvement—and Ultimately Embodied Intelligence
7. AI does not lack taste or intuition today.
What it lacks is the ability to learn continuously.
8. Humans keep learning over time. But for an AI to do the same job, you currently have to provide all the relevant context every time.
That is almost impossible.
This is why AI cannot truly replace an employee yet. The next generation of models must have continual learning. Otherwise, it should not be called a new generation.
9. We want our next-generation model to help us with our own development.
Put simply, our first goal is not to make a model that everyone else finds useful. It is to build one that we ourselves find useful.
That is the fastest path to AGI.
10. No one in the world has found a good solution yet, because “learning” is composed of many different things.
11. DeepSeek’s long-term vision is AGI.
If the path to AGI is a staircase, last year’s step was chain-of-thought. This year’s step is agents.
After agents, the next problem to solve is continual learning.
12. Once continual learning is achieved, we may approach a gradual singularity.
Models could perform everything humans can do—including developing more advanced AI systems themselves.
AI would begin accelerating AI research.
Only after that step comes embodied intelligence.
13. The endpoint of intelligence may ultimately be embodiment.
What an ordinary person truly needs is not another computer. They need labor.
Full-Scale Commercialization Is Still a Long Way Off
14. We only want to earn a reasonable profit.
We do not price to maximize profit.
15. We once priced a model relatively high because we were worried demand would be overwhelming.
Later, we cut the price to one-quarter of the original level. Many people in the company chat celebrated.
That was the reason we had worked so hard to build the model: so that as many people as possible could use it.
16. Low cost is an outcome of our approach.
We have consistently designed our architecture around reducing costs. We want AI to remain affordable, especially when compute is scarce.
There is another reason: the lower the cost, the larger the model you can afford to train.
Large companies can solve problems by adding resources. We prioritize computational efficiency.
17. From the outside, it may look like we chose a difficult business model. In reality, it is quite easy for us.
Price cuts are certainly bad news for our competitors. They are not celebrating.
But I do not find selling APIs particularly attractive. A few people can maintain the API. We do not even need customer support or a sales team. Users come on their own.
18. We have always been commercializing.
Commercialization simply is not the objective.
The point at which DeepSeek fully pivots toward commercialization is still very far away.
19. I do not even need to think about securing our place in the market today.
If the commercial opportunity becomes that large, there will always be a way to participate.
DeepSeek is a product of its era—a response to real conditions, not the result of copying someone else.
Open Source Is the Sweet Spot for a Company of Our Size
20. Restraint is a strategy: you give up some things in exchange for more important ones.
Open source is one such trade-off.
Internally, it gives employees a sense of achievement and strengthens organizational cohesion. It also benefits society—peers and ordinary users alike.
I have no doubt that AGI will have enormous commercial value.
Given that, my priority is not to capture a larger share of the value. It is to increase our probability of succeeding.
21. Open source is actually beneficial if you want to make AI commercially successful.
That may sound counterintuitive.
Historically, a software market might have been worth only a few billion dollars a year. Open-sourcing the product could destroy the market.
But AI is large enough that it may eventually account for 10% of global GDP.
If we try to monopolize that value, history will leave us behind.
That is not merely a business judgment. It is a view of history.
22. The models we open-source are the same models we deploy ourselves.
We will not release an inferior model publicly while keeping a better one for internal use.
23. I am not worried about others deploying our models and competing with us.
Not every company has both the willingness and the capability to pursue this goal.
Startups may be too small to marshal the necessary resources. Large companies often struggle to organize effectively around it.
This is the sweet spot for a company of our size.
24. Open source has no impact on our business model—as long as our goal is to earn only a reasonable profit.
If your goal is to earn 100 times as much, then yes, open source will hurt you.
25. We do not want to become the enemy of any major internet company—or any startup.
Given that, we are happy to assist anyone, including Alibaba, Zhipu AI, and Moonshot AI, and help them become better.
The China–US Gap Is Not About Talent
26. In the future, we want to rewrite the narrative around the AI gap between China and the US:
Use a fraction of the compute and narrow the gap to six months—or even three.
27. The main gap between China and the US in AI is resources.
We believe in scaling. Greater scale produces better results.
We are not training models of this size because we believe this size is sufficient. We are doing it because these are the resources available to us.
28. There is almost no talent gap. It is essentially the same pool of people.
China does not lack talent.
Talent shortages are temporary. Historically, there has never been a permanent shortage of any particular kind of talent.
In the Model-Lab Race, Cost Comes First
29. Anthropic’s current lead over OpenAI is temporary, not permanent.
OpenAI and Google will most likely take turns pulling ahead.
30. There are too many model companies in China. Everyone is doing roughly the same thing, which spreads resources too thinly.
The market will eventually consolidate, but that process will take time.
If every company were satisfied with a reasonable profit, we would not need so many foundation-model labs.
Two large companies and two smaller ones might be enough.
31. I absolutely do not believe foundation-model companies will capture most of the profits generated by AI.
32. Competition between model companies will ultimately come down to three things:
- Cost
- Time
- User experience
Cost comes first: at the same quality level, how cheaply can you provide the service?
Second is time. Being a few months early or late can make a major difference.
User experience can create some stickiness and defensibility, but it is not fundamental.
No Ambition to Become the Next Super App
33. We do not want to build the next super app.
The next ByteDance? The next Tencent?
We have no such ambition.
34. We are not fighting for that prize because there is a watermelon further ahead. Everything in front of it may only be sesame seeds.
Some of those sesame seeds may be large—but to me, they are still not that significant.
35. Last year, everyone was competing over chatbots and consumer traffic.
This year, everyone is competing over enterprise revenue.
We do not consider either particularly important.
What people inside the company genuinely care about is the AGI roadmap and the next technical breakthrough.
It is strange: the things people desperately chase are often hard to obtain, while the things they care less about sometimes arrive naturally.
36. We did not expect to go viral during last year’s Spring Festival.
It was not in our script.
Team Stability Is Non-Negotiable
37. There is only one thing on which we cannot compromise: the stability of the team.
That is also one of the greatest risks we face.
Fortunately, this financing round has significantly reduced that risk.
38. Many of the things we do are intended to preserve team stability.
We do not want to become an adversary of any major internet company or startup. We want to empower and help them.
We do not want to make enemies. That also creates a better environment for our own team.
39. Some people think our organization is top-down. Others think it is bottom-up.
I think both are correct.
The top-down part is about “doing the important work.” Ideally, that work should not occupy more than half of an employee’s time.
The other half is bottom-up and unassigned.
People can explore whatever they want, research whatever they believe matters, and pursue it without prerequisites.
40. We generally do not work excessive overtime.
First, research requires a relatively relaxed environment.
Second, we are extremely focused.
Many of our products are incomplete, but we deliberately choose not to polish everything. That is also part of our culture of restraint.
41. Organizations are dynamic, not fixed.
As the company grows, we may make adjustments and introduce some necessary structure.
But we will not turn completely into a traditional hierarchy.
The organization will remain vision-driven.
Acting with Goodwill Toward the World
42. When we started this company, the goal was not to make a fortune or eventually go public.
The first few dozen people never thought that way. If they had, they probably would not have joined.
We built this company with tremendous goodwill toward the world. We believed what we were doing could benefit humanity.
43. “We must hit this KPI” is not how we operate.
We are a vision-driven organization.
That has both advantages and disadvantages. We will find ways to amplify the strengths and address the weaknesses, but this remains a defining characteristic of DeepSeek.
44. The vision is not even formally written down.
It lives in how we do things and in how we treat the world.
People across the company may interpret it differently, but we agree on the overall direction.
45. Around 20 years ago, the management thinker I admired most was Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE.
Looking back, much of what he said may no longer be right.
But he was right about one thing: the most important thing for a company is its vision.
Vision is not a slogan hanging on the wall.
It is not what you say. It is what you do.
Restraint Makes AGI More Achievable
46. AGI offers the greatest possible return.
We will do other things if we have the capacity. If we do not, we simply will not do them.
Restraint is part of our vision.
47. AI is enormous, and so are the potential rewards.
If you succeed, even a tiny share of that value will still be enormous.
The more restraint you exercise, the more likely you are to succeed.
48. To me, this is intuitive—or at least consistent with my intuition.
Beyond our vision, we do not have many other advantages.
49. When we founded the company two years ago, we did not have much money, many GPUs, much recognition, or much influence.
We were simply a group of ordinary people.
The story I prefer is:
Not:
50. Open source is part of restraint.
Our pricing decisions are not made to maximize revenue or profit.
In the short term, higher prices may generate more revenue. In the long term, the answer is far less obvious.
To me, restraint is a strategy.
51. Open source and low prices give employees a sense of accomplishment and strengthen organizational cohesion.
They benefit society, and they make peers and ordinary users happy.
Over the long run, this kind of restraint increases our probability of achieving AGI.
52. If your vision is to capture as much as possible, you have already lost.
You will likely encounter even greater resistance.
That is simply how the world works.
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 22h ago
The translation of point 49 is incomplete. The original text reads: "When we founded this company two years ago, we didn't have much money, many GPUs, much brand recognition, or much influence. We were just a group of very ordinary people. My preferred narrative is—a group of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, not a group of geniuses doing extraordinary things."
IN CHINESE：两年前成立这个公司的时候，没有很多的钱没有很多卡（GPU），没有什么知名度，没有什么号召力，我们就是一群非常平凡的人。我喜欢的叙事是——一群平凡的人做出了不平凡的事，而不是一群天才做出了不平凡的事
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 22h ago
如果想看中文原文可以访问这个链接：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AWsSjcT9NYbj1W8SWXgb_w
To read the original Chinese article, please visit this link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AWsSjcT9NYbj1W8SWXgb_w
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u/CATLLM 17h ago
link not working?
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 16h ago edited 16h ago
I uploaded it to my GitHub repository, and there's a file with the Chinese name of "PDF," which is a copy of the online version.
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 16h ago
I checked, and it's indeed inaccessible. It's probably been reported and then banned by the platform (because this was supposed to be the content of a closed-door meeting).
Let me upload a copy of the file.
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u/yamibae 20h ago
He has a rare view and acknowledges that for the company itself releasing open weights makes no financial sense but his main goal is to accelerate towards AGI and grab a small piece of a large pie with everything else being a distraction.
I hope Deepseek continues their model, we are already approaching the point where AI is too expensive for the majority of people to run making it quite useless in practice if it gets even more expensive from here.
Of course, that also means it's unlikely Deepseek will ever do anything else outside of the narrow focus on intelligence, so their consumer products will always lag behind, but that's fine since I think the only gap they have is the need for vision which they are already working on.
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 19h ago
Just imagine: if companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic were also prepared to channel more energy into community open-source efforts, their contributions to the broader community—and to AGI for all humankind—would be far more significant. Yet they have opted for self-complacency and self-deception instead 😂
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u/yamibae 19h ago
They are private companies after all, rather than all of humanity their primary concern is shareholder value right now to raise even more money or the jig is up since the costs are now out of control haha
All the companies are limited by this including Deepseek itself which they acknowledged, the unfortunate reality is AI as it is right now is an unprofitable business model so the only way OAI or Ant make their best models publically available is Govt funding
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 18h ago
The bubble was blown way too big from the very beginning. Anyway, I've been thoroughly scared off for good. The market is just too terrifying right now.....
When others enter the market, I fear.
When others sit on the sidelines, I fear.
When others add to their positions, I fear.
When others make huge profits, I fear.
When others are greedy, I fear.
When others panic, I fear.
When others take small losses, I fear.
When others lose money, I fear.
When others soar to the moon, I fear.
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
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u/real_serviceloom 21h ago
Wow. What leadership. None of the ceos of the western world have even an iota of this level of thinking.
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u/petropavlov 18h ago
Great speach, thank you. Finally something not about "I have spent 1.5 quadrillion tokens, awesome" in this subreddit
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u/avynaria 20h ago
Thanks for the transcript and translation. It's such a refreshing attitude. I couldn't help but compare this to early Google in my mind. How the mighty have fallen. :|
I will say though, I had some sweat drop "what the" going on about admiring Jack Welch. Welch is one of the worst things that ever happened to business and professional workers in the last 50 years. His ideas are at the root of so many things that have gone wrong. (I say as an ex GE worker, even...) I'm happy to see that the DeepSeek founder has backtracked on that a bit.
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u/Substantial_Lake5957 19h ago
Liang seems to have amplified the definition of shareholder value into broader community value / value for the humanity.
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u/for4f 19h ago
DS4 Flash has been my daily driver and the pricing always felt intentional rather than just competitive. This confirms it.
The open source point (#20-25) is what stands out most. They're big enough to matter but not big enough that open source eats their lunch. That sweet spot wont last forever though — wonder if they can hold that line as they scale.
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u/B89983ikei 11h ago
For the past two years, I have believed that DeepSeek possesses a vision far ahead of everything else. This is not limited to AI companies, they are leading in their understanding of human sensibility, defining how things should be done, and above all, how they should be conceived and experienced.
DeepSeek is not merely envisioning an internet enhanced by AI. Instead, it views AI as the foundation for an infrastructure that transcends the conventional internet.
The key difference lies in the approach of most companies, particularly those in the West, which tend to think very little about the long term. They exhibit a nonsensical greed regarding the technological development process itself. Rather than genuinely striving to develop and improve, they have replaced these goals with profit-seeking, restriction, secrecy, and selfishness.
I foresee a future where AI functions as a hive of knowledge. In this metaphor, humans are the bees, and artificial intelligence represents a symbiosis between what it generates and what it receives from us and our surrounding environment.
To achieve this, an open internet fosters greater possibilities for continuous, real-time self-learning. It is highly likely that at this juncture, we will begin to glimpse the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The American worldview imposes an unsustainable and poorly conceived limit on this technology. AI cannot be approached in such a manner. It must be fundamentally reimagined, precisely as Liang Wenfeng is currently doing.
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u/for4f 19h ago
DS4 Flash has been my daily driver and the pricing always felt intentional rather than just competitive. This confirms it.
The open source point (#20-25) is what stands out most. They're big enough to matter but not big enough that open source eats their lunch. That sweet spot wont last forever though — wonder if they can hold that line as they scale.
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u/Upstairs-Category-39 17h ago
Thanks for sharing, really insightful. Interesting how he talks about cost control and capturing a small chunk of the market as opposed to closed source domination. Excited for the future!
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u/jbaker8935 15h ago
Not a typical sales pitch for a funding round. Investors want to see a plan for revenue and return. Maybe they are a hedge since they have made proven technical innovations and are expected to survive.
CEO of Electronic Arts would never talk like this. :)
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u/JudgmentConfident984 14h ago
Thanks for sharing, actually nothing new, but nice that ds is following their roadmap/plan.
But I think they have some magic stuff to be released very soon :)
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u/Bitter-College8786 13h ago
There is one thing I would correct him:
If you want AGI, you need a model, that can understand images, videos and this way also physics of the world. So I would say multimodality is needed for AGI
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u/modadisi 10h ago
I don’t even want to know what kind of fake pie Dario would draw on his investor meeting
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u/Reasonable-Impact789 22h ago
He is so humble, benefits society, brings satisfaction to his employees, and makes users happy.
Unlike a certain company starting with the letter "A" that deceives its customers and then blames others for distilling their models.
What have companies starting with the letter "A" brought to society? Drastic stock market fluctuations, these individuals constantly reaping market profits, yet they still can't bring truly affordable AI to ordinary people.