An Alibaba (9988) executive has denied reports that the Chinese e-commerce giant intends to invest in DeepSeek, Chinese news outlet The Paper reported on Friday.

The Paper cited a post that Yan Qiao, a vice president at Alibaba, made on her personal WeChat moments feed where she said "as a fellow Chinese and Hangzhou company, we applaud DeepSeek, but news circulating that Alibaba will invest in DeepSeek is fake news."

Earlier on Friday, other Chinese media outlets said there were rumours that Alibaba planned to invest US$1 billion (HK$7.8 billion) into DeepSeek.

REUTERS