PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Xinyuan Li

Xinyuan Li is an AI researcher whose work includes DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek's reasoning models. The December 2024 DeepSeek-V3 report names Li as a coauthor of a 671-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model. Li coauthored DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1 in January 2025, and Nature published a DeepSeek-R1 study in September 2025. Li left DeepSeek's Research & Engineering team by December 2025 after contributing to DeepSeek-V3.2.

Timeline

  1. December 2024

    DeepSeek-V3 contributor

    The December 2024 DeepSeek-V3 report names Li as a coauthor; its mixture-of-experts model has 671 billion total parameters and activates 37 billion per token.

  2. January 2025

    DeepSeek-R1-Zero reasoning

    DeepSeek-R1-Zero, coauthored by Li in January 2025, learns improved reasoning strategies through reinforcement learning.

  3. January 2025

    Training DeepSeek-R1

    DeepSeek-R1, coauthored by Li in January 2025, uses a multi-stage training framework that integrates rejection sampling, reinforcement learning, and supervised fine-tuning.

  4. September 2025

    DeepSeek-R1 in Nature

    Nature publishes a DeepSeek-R1 reinforcement-learning study in September 2025.

  5. By December 2025

    Leaving the DeepSeek team

    Li leaves DeepSeek's Research & Engineering team after contributing to DeepSeek-V3.2.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes DeepSeek. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes DeepSeek. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  3. 5,000 frontier users would be 38.2% of the core labs' 13,100 reported staffIncludes DeepSeek. 5,000 frontier users would be 38.2% of the core labs' 13,100 reported staff. We test the estimate against 3,913 named model contributors and dated all-staff records across Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, plus six additional frontier-grade labs.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes DeepSeek. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. DeepSeek-V3 Technical Report arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. README.md · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3 at ec67248f61244f350422cdfd2e78258af58edff9 huggingface.co. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. DeepSeek-R1 incentivizes reasoning in LLMs through reinforcement learning | Nature nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.