When 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng, founding father of the tech world’s newest AI star, DeepSeek, returned to his house village within the southern Chinese language province of Guangdong for Lunar New 12 months’s Eve celebrations final week, he was given a hero’s welcome.
The village honored him with a pink banner that stated, “Heat congratulations for changing into the satisfaction of his hometown,” in accordance with a translated model of the banner.
Wenfeng’s reputation is partly attributable to his AI startup, DeepSeek, which rattled U.S. tech stocks when it skyrocketed to the top of app stores final month (it is nonetheless topping iPhone charts) after claiming that its newest AI mannequin matched or surpassed AI from trade leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—however at a fraction of the associated fee.
Whereas AI from startups like Anthropic can cost $100 million to develop, DeepSeek claims its AI costs less than $6 million for a similar performance.
Liang Wenfeng. Photograph by VCG/VCG through Getty Photos
Wenfeng was already standard in Guangdong earlier than DeepSeek. He turned a billionaire after establishing the hedge fund Excessive-Flyer in 2015, which exceeded 100 billion yuan (near $14 billion) in property beneath administration by 2021. He’s now price at the very least $1 billion, in accordance with Forbes.
Residents of his hometown told the Financial Times that as a baby he was a “prime pupil” who learn comedian books and excelled in math.
“All of us grew up on this village,” one resident advised the publication. “We’re very pleased with him.”
Who’s Liang Wenfeng?
Wenfeng was born in 1985 and was a straight-A pupil in class, per the Wall Street Journal.
Earlier than founding DeepSeek, Wenfeng pursued an schooling in engineering. In line with The New York Times, he has a technical background in AI engineering and wrote his 2010 thesis on bettering AI surveillance techniques at Zhejiang College, a public college in Hangzhou, China. He graduated from Zhejiang with a grasp’s diploma in info and communication engineering.
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Wenfeng based the hedge fund Excessive-Flyer in June 2015 on the age of 30, per the Chinese language publication QQ.com. He and his workforce have been decided to make use of math and AI to ship sturdy outcomes for purchasers.
Excessive-Flyer skilled regulatory pressures from 2019 to 2023, main the workforce to focus extra on AI as a aspect venture and construct computing techniques with Nvidia graphics playing cards. Wenfeng formally based DeepSeek in July 2023. The AI firm turned extra of a spotlight for him after Excessive-Flyer needed to shut down its main funding product in February 2024, per The Occasions.
In a 2023 interview with Chinese language tech publication 36KR, Wenfeng stated that DeepSeek’s purpose was normal synthetic intelligence, or AI that surpasses human cognitive talents. He additionally stated that AI startups have been well-positioned to compete with established corporations.
“The market is altering,” Wenfeng advised the publication in accordance with an English-translated version of his remarks, which have been initially made in Chinese language. “The actual decisive pressure is usually not some ready-made guidelines and circumstances, however the capability to adapt and regulate to adjustments.”
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