Why did Zhong Shanshan, the richest man who dislikes seeking the limelight, give 350 million yuan to Liang Wenfeng?
When the name of Zhong Shanshan, China's richest man, is linked to DeepSeek, the AI large model unicorn, the most dramatic scene in Chinese business history unfolds quietly. On one side is the traditional industrial giant who became the richest man by selling mineral water and vaccines, and on the other side is the geek founder dedicated to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Zhong Shanshan indirectly invested about 350 million yuan in DeepSeek through his private equity fund. This is not a simple financial investment, but a strategic bet of traditional wealth on future technology (according to the August 25 report by 36Kr, "Zhong Shanshan Invested in Liang Wenfeng").
Hidden Capital Ties: The "Old Money" Anxiety Behind the 350 Million Yuan Investment
The confidentiality of this investment perfectly fits Zhong Shanshan's behavioral style as the "lone wolf in the business world". Through layer-by-layer equity penetration, the outside world only found that Guanzi Venture Capital, which is actually controlled by Zhong Shanshan, finally took shares in DeepSeek's first round of financing through partnerships such as Tianjin Huixing. For Zhong Shanshan, who has a fortune of hundreds of billions of yuan, 350 million yuan may only be a small part of his huge business territory, but this sum of money has been accurately invested in the current hottest AGI track.
Zhong Shanshan's move was not a whim. In the list of DeepSeek's first round of financing, in addition to the National Artificial Intelligence Fund and giants such as Tencent and CATL, a number of traditional industrial capitals have also gathered, such as iHealth, By-Health and Septwolves. These "Old Money" with abundant cash flow appeared collectively at the AI gaming table, reflecting the collective anxiety and awakening of traditional industry giants when facing the new round of technology cycle. When traditional growth engines such as consumption and real estate slow down, huge wealth is in urgent need of finding new coordinates of the era, and AGI is the most certain future.
The Richest Man's Second Growth Curve: From the "Wantai Moment" to the "Eve of AGI"
To understand why Zhong Shanshan invested in Liang Wenfeng, we must look back at his most successful investment. In 2001, Zhong Shanshan acquired 95% equity of Wantai Biological for 17.1 million yuan. Nearly 20 years later, this vaccine leader successfully landed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with its market value once exceeding 100 billion yuan. This investment not only consolidated Zhong Shanshan's position as China's richest man, but also proved his keen vision for underlying technology investment.
Nowadays, Zhong Shanshan seems to be replicating the "Wantai Moment" back then. His Guanzi Venture Capital, Qiantang New Materials Laboratory, and Kunshan Gewu Zhizhi Fund have made frequent moves in the primary market in recent years, with their investment territory highly focused on hard technology fields such as medicine, new materials, photonic chips, and even embodied intelligence. These invested enterprises are even required to move their registered addresses to the vicinity of the location of Yangshengtang, which fully shows Zhong Shanshan's deep involvement and desire for control in technology investment.
Investing in DeepSeek is Zhong Shanshan's first official entry into the AI large model track. This marks his attempt to tear off the simple label of "consumer goods boss" and complete the identity transition from an industrial giant to a "godfather of hard technology". If Nongfu Spring solves the "source of life" for human physiology, then AGI is the "source of intelligence" for human intelligence. Zhong Shanshan uses the money earned from selling water to bet on AGI, which essentially uses the past cash flow to buy the admission ticket for the future.
The Confidence of the Geek: Liang Wenfeng and the Closed Commercial Loop of the Open Source Route
Zhong Shanshan dares to make heavy investments, in addition to his own strategic transformation needs, also because Liang Wenfeng and DeepSeek have demonstrated extremely strong capabilities in closing commercial and technical loops. DeepSeek was once known for "never raising financing and not conducting commercialization", but Liang Wenfeng is not ignorant of business, instead he was waiting for the model to reach the critical point. When the performance of the open source model is approaching the ceiling of closed source models, and the API pricing is only one-tenth of that of its competitors, Liang Wenfeng has built a huge developer ecosystem at a very low cost.
Liang Wenfeng's logic is "restraint". He would rather reduce the price to a quarter to let everyone use AI first, because the AI cake is big enough and may eventually account for 10% of GDP. This "profit concession" strategy is not charity, but to quickly seize the market, stabilize the team and promote technology iteration. From language models to chain of thought, then to Agent and embodied intelligence, Liang Wenfeng has drawn the development roadmap of AGI into a "traceable ladder". This pragmatic progressive innovation is exactly the certainty that industrial capitals like Zhong Shanshan value most (according to the August 21 report from Sohu Video, "DeepSeek's Financing Exceeds 50 Billion Yuan, Liang Wenfeng Narrates the Logic Behind It").
In just three months, DeepSeek's valuation soared from 100 billion US dollars to 710 billion US dollars, and Liang Wenfeng, with a net worth of 36 billion US dollars, became the richest man among global AI model founders. This is not only an explosion of wealth, but also the first time that Chinese AI has stood on an equal footing with Silicon Valley in terms of pricing logic. Zhong Shanshan's 350 million yuan not only buys shares in DeepSeek, but also a historic revaluation of China's pricing power in the AI sector.
A "Mutual Pursuit" That Spans Cycles
The intersection between Zhong Shanshan and Liang Wenfeng is a highly symbolic "mutual pursuit" in Chinese business history. For Zhong Shanshan, this is the active move of "Old Money" towards "New Tech", a vote of confidence cast by the richest man with real money for China's AGI. For Liang Wenfeng, the support of traditional industrial capital not only brings funds, but also brings cross-cycle business wisdom and industrial resources.
"There are no successful enterprises, only enterprises of the era." When the richest man who sells water meets the genius who writes code, when the "porter of nature" meets the dream builder of the intelligent era, what we see is not just a low-key handshake between two men from Hangzhou, but also the realignment of China's wealth and technological forces at the turning point of the era. Zhong Shanshan uses the money earned from selling water to bet on Liang Wenfeng's AGI, betting not only on the future of a company, but also on the leading position of China's technology industry in the next era.
This article is from the WeChat official account "BT Finance" (ID: btcjv1), the author is BT Finance, and it is released with authorization from 36Kr.