Vol.06 2025 AI VC Roundtable: DeepSeek Goes Viral — Who Hit the Jackpot? Who Took the Hit?

It's been a full month since DeepSeek broke into the mainstream, and the chain reactions it triggered are still rippling through the industry. As a major focus of tech entrepreneurship and venture capital in recent years, how will the AI narrative shift from an investment perspective? What changes are entrepreneurs and investors on the ground actually sensing?

To explore these questions, we invited two AI entrepreneurs deeply embedded in the space — Han Xiao (Founder & CEO, Jina AI) and Wei Xiao Shaun (Co-founder & CEO, Hey Revia) — along with Emily, Vice President at Yunqi Capital, for a dynamic discussion.

🌟 Key Topics This Episode

▫️ The technical breakthrough code behind DeepSeek, China's first phenomenon-level AI product

▫️ How has the AI venture capital ecosystem changed from the entrepreneur's and investor's perspectives?

▫️ Elon Musk's Grok-3 is coming — how to fight the 2025 survival war?

▫️ Paradigm shifts in large models: what are the critical battlegrounds for AI venture capital in 2025? How should entrepreneurs respond?

🎤 Guests This Episode

▪️ Wei Xiao Shaun — Founder, Hey Revia. Based in Silicon Valley, building AI applications in healthcare. Previously at Google and Pony.ai.

▪️ Han Xiao — Founder & CEO, Jina AI. Building a leading search AI company that helps enterprises build reliable, high-quality generative AI and multimodal search applications.

▪️ Emily — Investor, Yunqi Frontier Technology Group. Long focused on frontier AI technologies and innovative projects. Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

▪️ Linda — Managing Director, Yunqi Capital (Host)

⏳ Timeline

00:00:48 Getting to know the guests

Part 1 Technical Breakthrough: Behind DeepSeek's Mainstream Breakthrough 00:05:12 Economical and accessible DeepSeek — why did it blow up only now?

00:07:03 The timing of DeepSeek R1's release — was there hidden strategy?

00:10:32 The "passive breakout" killer move: good-faith open source, good-faith thinking

00:12:37 The DeepSeek shockwave — how does Silicon Valley see it?

00:14:57 Investor perceptions updated: from costs to team composition

00:19:34 A Silicon Valley entrepreneur's view: has reverse tech export been realized?

Part 2 Industry Ripples: How DeepSeek Reshaped the AI Ecosystem 00:20:56 Upstream and downstream impact: model vendors, cloud providers, hosting platforms... who wins, who loses?

00:24:37 From RAG to Agentic Search — is another "Year of Search" upon us?

00:31:11 Higher-dimensional intelligence vs. customer-layer concerns: opportunities and challenges at the application layer

00:36:39 Finance, psychology, emotion... how far has DeepSeek's application potential been developed?

00:41:31 Entrepreneurial lessons: "Believe" in the upper limits of model capabilities, go deep on domain expertise

00:44:19 How does Elon Musk's Grok-3 shake up the large model battlefield?

Part 3 On Trends: The Critical Battlegrounds of 2025 00:52:04 Investor perspective: three things to watch in the 2025 AI ecosystem (multimodal capability improvements, alignment, AI + hardware)

00:56:31 AI entrepreneur survival rules: Expect intense competition; stay sharp on the pace of AI iteration and capability ceilings; be lean (streamlined and efficient) and mean (outstanding)

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Thanks for tuning in! As the tech ceiling keeps rising, Yunqi Capital will continue updating perspectives and sharing insights with ecosystem partners. Follow "Yunqi Capital" on WeChat for more content — we look forward to connecting with you in the cloud.

View episode transcript on Xiaoyuzhou