Entity Type: PRC Technology Company

iQIYI (愛奇藝), founded on January 6, 2010, by Gong Yu and headquartered in Beijing, China, is a subscription-based over-the-top (OTT) streaming service owned by Baidu. The platform produces and distributes films, television series, and digital content, serving global audiences with over 100 million paid subscribers. iQIYI operates regional offices, including Southeast Asia, and has expanded into co-productions and original content across China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The company has faced regulatory and market scrutiny, including U.S. investor investigations and a Taiwan ban due to political concerns. Its services include streaming, film production, distribution, and television content.

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company based in Hangzhou that develops large language models. Founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng (梁文鋒), who also co-founded and leads the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer (幻方), the company gained prominence in January 2025 with the release of its DeepSeek-R1 model. The company made headlines for developing AI models comparable to industry leaders like OpenAI’s GPT-4o but at a fraction of the cost—claiming to have trained its V3 model for just $6 million compared to GPT-4’s estimated $100 million. This cost efficiency, achieved partly in response to US restrictions on Nvidia chip exports to China, sent “shockwaves” through global markets, contributing to a historic $600 billion drop in Nvidia’s market value. DeepSeek’s models are released under MIT License as “open weight” software, though this provides less freedom for modification than true open-source alternatives.

Lead Digital is the trade name for Shanghai Lingshu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (上海羚數智能科技有限公司), a Chinese industrial software company founded in April 2021, developing cloud-based manufacturing execution systems and production management platforms for manufacturers. The company helps clients in the automotive parts, electronics assembly, and equipment manufacturing sectors digitize production workflows and integrate factory-floor data systems.

Zhiyuan Innovation (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd. (智元創新上海 科技有限公司), is a robotics manufacturing company based in China. Founded in February 2023, the company is located in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai. The company focuses on creating humanoid robots, service robots, commercial cleaning robots, and robotic dexterous hands, primarily serving the electronic equipment manufacturing industries. The company also develops AI-powered hardware and software for computers, communications, and electronic devices. Since March 2023, Zhiyuan Innovation’s investors include tech giant Tencent, Chinese automaker BYD, and venture capital firms Sequoia Capital China and Matrix Partners China.