Hillhouse Partner Yan Wentao Reportedly to Join DeepSeek as CFO
Yan Wentao, a partner at Hillhouse, is reportedly set to join DeepSeek as chief financial officer, according to a Chinese tech media report. The report said Yan has initiated his departure process at Hillhouse and is expected to formally start at DeepSeek soon if no unexpected circumstances arise.
Yan, born in 1991, has invested in ByteDance, Xiaohongshu and MiniMax. In July 2026, he said at an investment conference that he began researching large models in 2020 and started paying attention to embodied intelligence in 2023.
DeepSeek has recently accelerated its capital market moves. On Sept. 9, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, that DeepSeek has hired CITIC Securities to prepare for an initial public offering on Shanghai's STAR Market. The company plans to start the IPO process in 2026, though the potential timing, fundraising size and target valuation have not been determined. In June 2026, DeepSeek completed a roughly $7.4 billion funding round with a post-investment valuation exceeding $50 billion; in July 2026, Reuters reported a new round valuing the company at 500 billion yuan.
On the product side, DeepSeek released DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on Sept. 10, a 552B-parameter MoE model with a new architecture, described as the smallest in the new model family. With capital and product efforts advancing and a CFO reportedly set to join, the company's IPO process appears to be accelerating.
