How Many Employees Does Deepseek AI Have? (January 2025)

As of January 2025, 200 people work at Deepseek AI. In comparison OpenAI has around 3,500 employees. Deepseek AI currently has 8 open positions listed on LinkedIn at their headquarters in Hangzhou, China.

As of January 2025, 200 people are employed at Deepseek AI.

This article will dive more into statistics and facts about how many people work at Deepseek.

The official company name of Deepseek is “Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Fundamental Technology Research Co., Ltd”. The company number (or ICP as its called in China) is 2023025841.

In general not much data around the employees of Deepseek AI is publicly available.

But when we review the public profiles of some of its staff, its clear they have background in prominent Chinese tech companies such as Tencent and Alibaba, and some have previously interned at Microsoft and Google among others.

And if we dive deeper in their research papers, we can also identify the names of their researchers.

The Executive Deepseek team

Just like it's hard to identify the employees from Deepseek, not much is available around the executive team. The most prominent (although still publicly not a house-hold name like Sam Altman from OpenAI) is thier founder and 100% owner Liang Wenfeng:

Liang Wenfeng, Founder and CEO

Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, defies the typical AI pioneer profile with his finance background. After co-founding High-Flyer hedge fund in 2015, he integrated AI into trading strategies. In 2021, he began acquiring Nvidia processors, setting the stage for DeepSeek's 2023 launch, aiming for artificial general intelligence.

Under Liang's leadership, DeepSeek challenges industry giants with cost-effective AI advancements. He recruits top talent from Chinese universities and embraces an open-source model to foster innovation. Liang's vision is to advance technological innovation and instill confidence in young innovators, shaping a future where AI thrives.

Deepseek Arxiv Authors

One of the best places to identify the Deepseek employees is the arXiv database, where the search on Deepseek returns 68 results.

And looking at the most recent paper it had 199 credited authors. In comparison, the much talked about Google Gemini Paper, where Google founder Sergey Brin also famously contributed, had 1,350 authors credited.

Here are the list of the Deepseek employees that are credited in the paper.

‍

What Deepseek are looking for in future employees

I reviewed their open Linkedin Job posts to see if I could find any facts about the company.

Not much is found, but if I sum up what they are looking for its;

• Hands-on Understanding of Large Models: DeepSeek seeks individuals who have actively explored LLMs, understand how datasets and evaluation methods shape model capabilities, and can identify both strengths and weaknesses.
• Obsessive Focus on Data Quality: They look for candidates who can design, manage, and continually refine data annotation processes—maintaining high standards and iterating on feedback to enhance overall model performance.
• Deep Curiosity & Multi-domain Interests: Beyond AI expertise, the team values broad thinkers who stay well-informed across disciplines and have a genuine fascination with how knowledge connects and evolves.
• Excitement for AGI & Self-Motivation: A driving passion for the breakthroughs (and even the tough challenges) of general artificial intelligence is key—along with the initiative to solve complex problems independently.
• High-performance Computing (HPC) Specialization: Optimizing everything from hardware-level networking (e.g., RDMA) to operator compilers is a major focus, so specialized HPC skills are a definite plus.
• Legal & Compliance Insight: For certain roles, they specifically seek individuals who can translate AI governance rules into model and product compliance—developing risk frameworks and aligning with global regulatory standards.
• Strong Product Vision: Designing front-end demos, interactive interfaces, or bridging the gap between research and real-world user experience is also a standout skill at DeepSeek.