SHANGHAI, Feb 7 (Reuters) - An Alibaba 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 ( BABA ), 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 ( BABA ) will invest in DeepSeek is

fake news."

Earlier on Friday, other Chinese media outlets said there

were rumours that Alibaba ( BABA ) planned to invest $1 billion into

DeepSeek.