Genius Teen “Critiques” DeepSeek, Only to Face Backlash from Web3 Investors
- Core Thesis: Former Huawei “Genius Teen” Li Bojie and Web3 investment firm ABCDE Capital have engaged in a public dispute over the Metagent project. The core conflict stems from fundamental disagreements between the founder and the investors regarding post-investment responsibilities, fund usage, and project progress, ultimately leading to the project’s effective halt.
- Key Elements:
- After Li Bojie criticized DeepSeek’s poor interview process and withdrew following plagiarism accusations, ABCDE co-founder Du Jun labeled him “the founder with the least sense of contract.” The focus then shifted to the entrepreneurial dispute.
- The Metagent project was positioned as a token-driven, no-code AI Agent platform. The investment agreement with ABCDE totaled $1.5 million, but only the initial $500,000 was disbursed; the remaining $1 million was subject to conditional payments.
- The investor accused Li of going off-grid after July 2024, refusing to provide financial data, delivering a poor-quality demo, and posting only a dozen tweets on social media, alleging he “took the money and ran.”
- Li responded that the lack of full funding hindered development. He stated he resigned in October 2024 due to family and compliance risks, with board approval, and had adhered to the agreement to avoid Web3-related fields prior to his departure.
- Other institutions, such as ArkStream Capital, revealed that during due diligence, Li confused already-invested institutions with interested funds, had amateurish contract clauses, and repeatedly changed his stance on token unlock schedules, leading them to abandon the investment.
- The Metagent project is effectively stalled (its last social media update was in June 2024). Li later moved on to a new project, Pine AI, which boasts over 150,000 users and completed a $25 million Series A funding round in December 2025.
Original Author: Nicky, Foresight News
On July 6th, Li Bojie, a former Huawei "Genius Youth," sparked attention by publicly criticizing his interview experience with DeepSeek. The larger controversy that ensued was his public dispute with former investment institution ABCDE Capital over the entrepreneurial project Metagent.
Li Bojie detailed his experience attending the DeepSeek interview on social media. According to his account, after passing the written test, the process was stalled for nearly half a month, and an interview was only arranged after repeated reminders. The interview required completing two rounds of coding tests. During the second round, the interviewer believed the content he discussed was a "research problem," repeatedly questioning the challenges of engineering implementation without showing an understanding.
During the coding segment, the interviewer noticed him frequently looking at his left screen and immediately questioned him about suspected plagiarism, stating that the interview could not proceed unless he proved his innocence. Li Bojie claimed this accusation made him feel "seriously offended" and decided to end the interview on the spot. Subsequently, he called for the matter to be spread on public platforms.
Li Bojie received the Microsoft Research Fellowship in 2017
According to public information on Baidu Baike, Li Bojie was born in 1992, graduated from the Special Class for the Gifted Young of the University of Science and Technology of China, and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science. During his Ph.D., he published papers in top-tier conferences such as SOSP and SIGCOMM. In 2017, he received the Microsoft Research Fellowship. In 2019, he was selected for Huawei's inaugural "Genius Youth" program, one of only eight people nationwide, joining the 2012 Laboratories and being graded at level P20. He served roles from Assistant Scientist to Deputy Chief Expert, contributing to the optimization of the Ascend AI chip and distributed training of large-scale models. In July 2023, he left Huawei to found Logenic AI (now Pine AI).
Just one day after Li Bojie publicly criticized the interview experience, a post from Du Jun, co-founder of Web3 investment institution ABCDE, shifted the focus of public opinion to another dimension.
On the afternoon of July 7th, Du Jun publicly accused Li Bojie, calling him "the most uncontractual founder I have ever worked with." That evening, Li Bojie responded, and in the early hours of the 8th, Du Jun added further clarifications, leading to a debate between the two parties surrounding the Metagent project.
The core of the dispute lies in post-investment responsibility. In 2024, Li Bojie founded the Web3+AI project Metagent, positioning it as a Token-driven no-code platform that allows users to create and tokenize AI agents, combining AI agents with blockchain tokenomics. In February 2024, ABCDE Capital participated in the investment, with a total agreement value of $1.5 million. The first tranche of $500,000 was received, with the remaining $1 million subject to conditional disbursement.
Du Jun stated that the team's Demo shown in June 2024 was of extremely poor quality, the project's social media account had only posted a dozen or so tweets, and progress was far below expectations. Starting from July 2024, Li Bojie stopped responding to investor inquiries, deleted his Telegram account, and left the group, handing over communication to co-founder Zhuang Siyuan. Subsequently, the investors repeatedly requested complete financial statements but never received adequate responses. Du Jun said that while project failure is acceptable, taking the money and running is not.
Li Bojie responded that the investment received was only $500,000, but the company's equity was recorded based on the full $1.5 million share. The incomplete funds led him and his co-founder to voluntarily take pay cuts, hindering both recruitment and R&D. In October 2024, due to family reasons preventing him from leaving mainland China and his belief that the Web3 project posed compliance risks, he resigned from Metagent with the board's approval. He claimed he had fulfilled his regular disclosure obligations until his resignation and that subsequent projects also stayed clear of Web3, AI infrastructure, and related fields as per the agreement.
HarryM, a former researcher at ABCDE, posted that during communications in October 2024, the team still showed a rough Demo, but their primary concern was when the remaining $1 million would arrive. They also inquired about the possibility of issuing a Meme coin. He noted that throughout the year, the team was consistently perfunctory towards the investors' resources and suggestions.
Ye Su, a partner at ArkStream Capital, also publicly stated that Li Bojie had approached his institution during the fundraising period. The team initially expressed interest due to the project's promising background. However, during due diligence, they discovered that Li Bojie had intentionally confused institutions that had already invested with funds that had merely expressed interest. Additionally, the contract terms he sent were quite amateurish, and the team's stance on the token unlock schedule was inconsistent, sometimes saying "we'll decide later" and other times changing to "we can set it now." Consequently, the institution decided to abandon the investment.
Metagent was selected as a potential project in the BNB Chain Hackvolution hackathon in September 2023, receiving a $2,000 reward. In June 2024, it won an award in the Decentralized AGI track of the BeWater AI Crypto Hackathon.
Its last social media post was on June 15, 2024, and it has not been updated for over two years. The project has effectively stalled.
As Metagent faded away, Li Bojie moved on to a new project, Pine AI. Founded in late 2024 and formerly known as Logenic AI, Pine AI is a consumer-facing autonomous AI agent platform. After a user submits a task description, the AI agent can handle digital chores like making phone calls, negotiating bills, canceling subscriptions, and applying for refunds. The platform emphasizes privacy protection and holds compliance certifications.
According to public information on the project's official website, Pine AI currently has over 150,000 users, achieves a 93% success rate in negotiations, and has saved users over $3 million cumulatively. It completed a $25 million Series A funding round in December 2025. Li Bojie joined as an advisor in June 2024 and officially assumed the role of Chief Scientist in February 2025. He recently left the project due to his research interests shifting back to foundational models, clarifying that he is not the founder of Pine AI and that his departure was purely a result of a change in research focus.
