“Alice Hwang-related companies secretly invested in DeepSeek”

The Information, an American IT media outlet, reported on the 12th (local time), citing anonymous sources, that companies related to Alice Huang, who is in a romantic relationship with former NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, secretly made an equity investment in Chinese AI company DeepSeek, promising to supply NVIDIA's cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

According to reports, in the second investment round held from July to October this year, Deepseek introduced Century Litong, a Chinese cloud computing company linked to Alice Huang and her family, and its parent company, Jiangsu Retal Electronics, to several investors.

Deepseek employees explained at the time that the Litong Group was a company that supplied NVIDIA AI chips in large quantities through the black market and deserved the opportunity to invest in Deepseek despite fierce competition.

In the end, Litong Group participated in the investment in Deepseek, but since the investment was made through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), no corporation related to Litong Group appears in the list of Deepseek shareholders.

One of these investments was made through an SPV set up by Beijing-based venture capital firm Monolith Management, which is currently Deepseek's third-largest shareholder.

According to records, Letal Electronics invested 95 million yuan (about 19 billion won) in this SPV.

Litong Group's total investment amount in DeepSeek has not been confirmed. An official said Litong Group's investment was made through several SPVs.

Century Litong is a company that secured priority access to chips by obtaining Nvidia's 'Preferred Cloud Partner' status four months after its establishment in 2023, and was founded by a company ultimately controlled by Alice Huang's sister Huang Yu.

After 2023, despite US export controls, at least $7.5 billion (approximately 240,000 units) worth of Nvidia chips have been imported into China, and recently even succeeded in importing cutting-edge Blackwell chips.

About 30 Chinese big tech and state-owned companies participated in Deepseek's second round of funding, raising a total of 105.5 billion yuan (about 21.1 trillion won). This is the largest financing ever for a Chinese AI company.

DeepSeek attracted attention after it was revealed that the 'R1' model, released in early 2025, was trained at a much lower cost while showing performance comparable to OpenAI's latest model.

Jensen Huang was the person who most highly evaluated deep chic at the time. In his keynote speech at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) held in January, he also mentioned the DeepSeek R1 model as "a really interesting achievement" and "very satisfied."

DeepSearch has been at the forefront of adopting Huawei chips, but is still working to secure additional Nvidia Blackwell chips as a 'Plan B' in case these chips do not work properly.

Alice Huang has never held a stake or held an executive position in Century Litong or Letal, but several corporate transactions involving her sister Huang Wei and her husband Kang Wei suggest that they are closely related, The Information said.