01The Leak Chain: From a WeChat Memo to a Dozen Media Outlets
The origin story of this memo deserves to be spelled out first. Multiple Chinese reports agree on the narrative: this was an "investor communication session," with the recording length described by different sources as either "nearly 4 hours" or "3 hours 44 minutes," dated to May 20, 2026. The content first circulated in a small circle as a WeChat article for about a month, until July 22–23, when Tencent Tech published a version organized into 118 Q&A pairs across 11 topics, noting "the text preserves the original meaning as much as possible, with only minor editing"—that disclaimer itself tells you this is not an official verbatim transcript, but a post-transcription edited summary.
The same day, 36Kr reposted the Tencent Tech version, and Sina Finance, Huxiu, NetEase, Phoenix, Economic Herald, and others followed suit. A separate, earlier, shorter "52-item version" also circulated; PANews's original report admitted this was "circulating in the wild…collected from multiple sources", and pointed out that the actual original source was an earlier leak from another WeChat public account, not a firsthand recording.
The English-language world reacted a step later. Independent Substack author Grace Shao published a machine-translated English version of the memo on July 23, while acknowledging it used "AI speech-to-text + AI-assisted translation," with potential recognition and attribution errors. ChainCatcher's English report carried no bylined reporter and pointed to no named whistleblower or original source—only stating it "circulated last month."
The most important thing to remember about this chain is its shape: an unconfirmed audio transcript → one month of small-circle circulation → sudden near-simultaneous reposting by a dozen outlets → no party claiming to possess the original audio.
02Financing Context: Why This Meeting Happened
The memo is attributed to DeepSeek's first external funding round. CNBC explicitly reported on June 18 that DeepSeek "completed its first external funding round this week at a valuation exceeding $50 billion, making it China's highest-valued pure AI startup." Bloomberg's June 3 report gave the amount: approximately $7.4 billion (over 50 billion RMB).
According to the widely reposted memo versions, investors included Tencent (10 billion RMB), CATL (5 billion RMB), NetEase, JD.com, IDG Capital, and a national-level AI industry fund; Liang Wenfeng himself reportedly contributed 20 billion RMB personally. This "investor communication session" was a communication step during due diligence for this funding round—which is why the memo contains both a technical roadmap and financing clause details.
03What the Memo Said
Everything below comes from the unconfirmed leaked memo—mentally prepend "reportedly" to every sentence.
Confidence: HighThe US-China gap thesis. In the memo, Liang Wenfeng is quoted saying the US-China AI gap is "mainly a compute-resource issue, not a talent issue," with the goal of narrowing it from current levels to 3–6 months, using only a fraction of US compute (other sources mention the current gap is roughly 12–18 months, with compute at about one-twentieth of the US). Model competition ultimately comes down to cost, time, and user experience, with cost being the most critical—this framework appears highly consistent across 8+ independent Chinese media outlets and was cited by English-language outlets like ChainCatcher.
Confidence: HighThe AGI "staircase" roadmap. The memo says Liang Wenfeng likened technical evolution to a "staircase": last year (2025) the step was Chain-of-Thought (CoT), this year (2026) the step is agents, the next step is solving "continuous learning" capability, then models that can self-iterate toward a "singularity," ultimately pointing toward embodied intelligence. This "staircase" metaphor appears verbatim across 8–9 independent Chinese media outlets, and Bloomberg also referenced the same metaphor from attendees in two independent reports (May 22, July 17).
Confidence: Medium"Watermelons and sesame seeds"—refusing to become the next ByteDance or Tencent. The memo quotes Liang Wenfeng saying DeepSeek does not aspire to be "the next ByteDance or Tencent," will not compete for near-term monetization or user scale, because "there are watermelons ahead; what's in front might just be sesame seeds"—meaning current commercialization opportunities are trivial relative to the long-term goal of AGI. This line is consistent across 8 Chinese outlets, but confidence is slightly lower than the previous two items because different versions diverge on the exact phrasing of "how" he refused.
Confidence: LowThe dubious "no-poaching" clause. A narrower-circulation claim says one of Liang Wenfeng's conditions for investors was a promise not to poach DeepSeek's people and not to encourage employees to start their own ventures. This appeared only in one 36Kr-affiliated financing outlet; CNBC, when citing it, wrote verbatim that it "could not independently verify this report", and DeepSeek, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance all failed to respond to CNBC's request for comment. This is the lowest-confidence item in this entire article.
04The Other Side of Silence: What Did DeepSeek and Liang Wenfeng Say? Nothing at All
From the alleged meeting date of May 20 to today (2026-07-24), no Chinese or English outlet—including Bloomberg, CNBC, 36Kr, or Tencent Tech—has reported any form of confirmation, denial, or even "no comment" from DeepSeek or Liang Wenfeng regarding this memo's authenticity. CNBC explicitly noted that DeepSeek, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance did not respond to its comment requests. Multiple Chinese reposting outlets (such as 10jqka, Sina, jrj.com.cn) also directly stated "DeepSeek has not confirmed this record," with the content merely "circulating in the industry."
This silence itself is not a new phenomenon. A South China Morning Post report specifically discussed Liang Wenfeng's long-standing scarcity of public appearances, with outsiders even speculating about "who is speaking for DeepSeek"—Liang Wenfeng's silence pattern happens to provide the best propagation soil for an untraceable "internal memo": without a personal debunking, the rumor gains a default credibility boost, even though that boost itself has no factual basis.
Voices questioning this memo often come from the outlets that reposted it:
- PANews's original report used the phrasing "circulating in the wild…may differ slightly from the original text," and explained that the so-called "legendary 4-hour meeting" actually came from an earlier leak by another WeChat account, not a firsthand record.
- The independent Substack English version self-labeled the process as "AI speech-to-text + AI-assisted translation," explicitly flagging potential recognition errors.
- A verified Weibo user with a BFSU background, He Kaiwen, publicly commented upon seeing the "52-sentence" version: "obviously AI-written, waiting for a debunking"—this Weibo post was fully captured by Sina News' aggregation page. As of press time, the debunking he was waiting for has never appeared.
The two circulating versions also contradict each other: one is the Tencent Tech-organized "118 items / 11 topics" full version, the other is the earlier "52-item" condensed version—no outlet has clearly explained whether the short version is a subset of the long one, from a different session, or, as He Kaiwen suspected, mixed with AI-generated content.
05Unresolved Questions
- Will DeepSeek, Liang Wenfeng, or any investor named in the memo issue any form of statement after 2026-07-24—even a private, unnamed one?
- Who is the leak source? Could the purported audio file itself be independently authenticated via voiceprint or metadata, rather than relying on a machine transcript?
- Why do the 52-item version and the 118-item version differ so significantly—is it a subset relationship, different sessions, or AI-generated content mixed in?
- Beyond Bloomberg citing the "staircase" metaphor from attendee accounts, has any top-tier Western financial outlet independently verified any specific sentence from the memo?
06Epilogue: Whether the Content Is True, and What This Memo "Means," Are Two Separate Questions
This article deliberately refrains from presenting the memo's content as "things Liang Wenfeng said"—because from start to finish, the only confirmable fact is: a transcript claiming to come from Liang Wenfeng, with no personal confirmation, no verifiable original recording, and even reposting outlets admitting "there may be discrepancies," was near-simultaneously reported by a dozen media outlets.
Even so, this event itself is worth documenting, for two reasons. First, regardless of whether the content is verbatim accurate, it reflects what the market is currently willing to believe DeepSeek is thinking—a Liang Wenfeng figure who attributes the US-China gap to compute rather than talent, refuses short-term monetization, and bets on "continuous learning" and a "singularity" is itself a narrative widely propagated with almost no one questioning its source; the existence and popularity of that narrative are real, even if the content itself is not. Second, this first funding round itself is a verifiable fact—the $7.4 billion, the >$50 billion valuation—these numbers come from Bloomberg and CNBC's independent reporting and do not depend on that memo. The financing is real; whether the memo truly recorded the meeting behind the financing remains an open question.
Until one party—DeepSeek, the investors, or the original whistleblower—is willing to endorse this memo, the most responsible approach is to read it as a "widely circulated claim," not as "things Liang Wenfeng said."
Methodology note: This article is based on multi-source cross-verification of publicly available Chinese and English reports, with sources and confidence levels noted for each conclusion; no unverifiable channels such as social media DMs or anonymous insider tips were used.