DeepSeek adds former Jane Street engineer to harness team amid agentic AI push

Chinese artificial intelligence heavyweight DeepSeek has recruited a former Jane Street star engineer to its new AI "harness" team, as it looks to ensure it does not fall behind in the agentic AI era. Cui Tianyi joined the Hangzhou start-up in March, according to a post on his LinkedIn profile on Tuesday, after four years at Hong Kong-based quantitative trading firm TSY Capital, which he co-founded in 2022. The engineer previously spent nearly nine years as a software developer and researcher at renowned US quant trading firm Jane Street in Hong Kong, working across equities and fixed income. Cui's arrival underscores DeepSeek's efforts to develop AI harnesses - the key software infrastructure that turns an AI model into a functional and autonomous AI agent.