Leaked DeepSeek pitch deck is "pure fabrication," team lead says

Yesterday, a 32-page investment deck signed by Huaxing Kangping Private Equity made the rounds. Titled "DeepSeek Investment Proposal," it aims to raise 300 million yuan to invest indirectly in DeepSeek at a roughly $71 billion valuation, with each check coming in at no less than 5 million yuan.

DeepSeek Harness lead Cui Tianyi was not impressed. He posted the actual table from the V4 paper, pointing out that some middleman had turned V4-Pro's SWE Verified score of 80.6 and Opus 4.6's 80.8 into "coding ability only 0.3% weaker than Claude's flagship." His assessment: that's approaching "pure fabrication."

The deck gets worse. It identifies Liang Wenfeng as a "former senior technical expert at Alibaba DAMO Academy" and predicts DeepSeek will list on China's A-share market within three years, with a regulatory fast-track.

By the end, the whole thing reads less like an official DeepSeek fundraising document and more like a sales pitch someone assembled in a hurry.