When 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng, founding father of the tech world’s newest AI star, DeepSeek, returned to his residence village within the southern Chinese language province of Guangdong for Lunar New Yr’s Eve celebrations final week, he was given a hero’s welcome.
The village honored him with a crimson banner that stated, “Heat congratulations for changing into the pleasure of his hometown,” based on a translated model of the banner.
Wenfeng’s reputation is partly on account of 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 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. Picture by VCG/VCG by way of Getty Photographs
Wenfeng was already common in Guangdong earlier than DeepSeek. He grew to become a billionaire after establishing the hedge fund Excessive-Flyer in 2015, which exceeded 100 billion yuan (near $14 billion) in property underneath administration by 2021. He’s now price a minimum of $1 billion, based on Forbes.
Residents of his hometown told the Financial Times that as a toddler he was a “high scholar” who learn comedian books and excelled in math.
“All of us grew up on this village,” one resident instructed the publication. “We’re very pleased with him.”
Who’s Liang Wenfeng?
Wenfeng was born in 1985 and was a straight-A scholar at school, 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 programs 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 group have been decided to make use of math and AI to ship robust outcomes for purchasers.
Excessive-Flyer skilled regulatory pressures from 2019 to 2023, main the group to focus extra on AI as a aspect venture and construct computing programs with Nvidia graphics playing cards. Wenfeng formally based DeepSeek in July 2023. The AI firm grew to become extra of a spotlight for him after Excessive-Flyer needed to shut down its main funding product in February 2024, per The Instances.
In a 2023 interview with Chinese language tech publication 36KR, Wenfeng stated that DeepSeek’s objective was common synthetic intelligence, or AI that surpasses human cognitive skills. He additionally stated that AI startups have been well-positioned to compete with established corporations.
“The market is altering,” Wenfeng instructed the publication based on an English-translated version of his remarks, which have been initially made in Chinese language. “The actual decisive power is commonly not some ready-made guidelines and situations, however the capacity to adapt and modify to modifications.”
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