DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng’s hedge fund, High-Flyer Quant, has built pre-IPO positions in several of China’s most closely watched technology listings this year, including memory chipmaker CXMT and humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics.
Two High-Flyer affiliates, Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management and Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management, took positions across a range of sectors ahead of these companies’ public debuts, spanning chip packaging, electronic components, renewable energy, and semiconductor supply-chain businesses. Nearly half of the funds’ allocations this year went to semiconductors and related supply-chain companies.
CXMT was the largest single position, with the two funds holding a combined pre-IPO stake estimated at $26 million. The stock surged 466% on its Shanghai debut last month, briefly making it China’s most valuable listed company, and has gained an additional 20% since then.
The funds also held a pre-IPO stake in Unitree Robotics estimated at $5.8 million. Unitree closed 460% above its IPO price on its first day of trading in Shanghai last week, though the stock has since fallen back about 27% from that peak.
DeepSeek itself took a separate and distinct position in Unitree, acquiring a 2.31% strategic allocation and agreeing to a 36-month lock-up period, three times longer than the 12-month hold most other strategic investors accepted in the same deal. This reflects a different objective than High-Flyer’s approach: DeepSeek’s stake functions as a long-term strategic holding tied to its position in the broader AI supply chain, while High-Flyer’s stake was structured as a return-seeking investment.
These pre-IPO opportunities have emerged in part because Beijing has been encouraging strategically important technology companies to list domestically rather than overseas, creating an environment where funds positioned early in sectors aligned with state industrial priorities, such as semiconductors and robotics, have captured outsized returns.
The strategy has carried real risk. During a global AI-chip selloff in July, only one of High-Flyer’s nine investment products avoided losses that month, according to state-backed media reporting. Chinese quant funds broadly recovered those losses by August.
Separately, DeepSeek’s own capital needs have grown substantially and now diverge sharply from High-Flyer’s scale. DeepSeek opened itself to outside investors for the first time this year, raising 50 billion yuan in its initial funding round, an amount exceeding half of High-Flyer’s total assets under management of 80 billion yuan. DeepSeek is reportedly now in discussions to raise at least $7.4 billion more in a second funding round, which would value the company at $74 billion. High-Flyer and DeepSeek did not respond to requests for comment on these transactions.
