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 purple banner that mentioned, “Heat congratulations for turning into the pleasure of his hometown,” in response to a translated model of the banner.
Wenfeng’s recognition is partly resulting from 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 business leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—however at a fraction of the price.
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. Picture by VCG/VCG by way of Getty Photographs
Wenfeng was already well-liked 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 belongings beneath administration by 2021. He’s now price a minimum of $1 billion, in response to Forbes.
Residents of his hometown told the Financial Times that as a baby he was a “high pupil” who learn comedian books and excelled in math.
“All of us grew up on this village,” one resident informed 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. Based on The New York Times, he has a technical background in AI engineering and wrote his 2010 thesis on enhancing AI surveillance techniques at Zhejiang College, a public college in Hangzhou, China. He graduated from Zhejiang with a grasp’s diploma in data 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 group had 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 group to focus extra on AI as a facet undertaking 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 mentioned that DeepSeek’s aim was basic synthetic intelligence, or AI that surpasses human cognitive skills. He additionally mentioned that AI startups had been well-positioned to compete with established corporations.
“The market is altering,” Wenfeng informed the publication in response to an English-translated version of his remarks, which had been initially made in Chinese language. “The true decisive drive is usually not some ready-made guidelines and situations, however the capability to adapt and modify to modifications.”
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