Liang Wenfeng is a Chinese entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of AI company DeepSeek, currently making waves in the AI industry, find out more about him, his education and net worth below
The young tech expert has achieved significant growth and success in the recent months, becoming the biggest competitor to OpenAI.
Liang hails from the world of finance and after graduating from Zhejiang University, he cofounded the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer in 2015 and incorporated AI in its trading strategies to predict market trends and help make investment decisions.
Who is hedge-fund manager Liang Wenfeng, Founder of DeepSeek Chinese AI startup, biography, age, family, education, nationality and net worth
A Chinese computer nerd is stunning tech experts with a bargain price AI tool that beats the world's top players on several benchmarks.
Liang Wenfeng's system, called DeepSeek-V3, has powers of "reasoning" that match or beat those of the equivalent devices by the world's top… pic.twitter.com/zfk90hWhNV
— Nury Vittachi (@NuryVittachi) January 22, 2025
The Rise of Liang Wenfeng, Founder – DeepSeek: From Quant Finance to AI Visionary
At 30, Liang Wenfeng was building a quant hedge fund. By 2015, he launched High-Flyer, now managing $8B AUM.
In 2021, he bet big on AI—acquiring 10,000 H800 chips and bringing over his top… pic.twitter.com/941KXRSKJv
— Nigel D'Souza (@Nigel__DSouza) January 27, 2025
DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence lab that deals in developing open-source large language models.
Liang Wenfeng bio
Liang Wenfeng is a Chinese entrepreneur and businessman who was born in 1985 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong. He was born to a primary school teacher, and he is the co-founder of the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer. He is also the founder and CEO of their artificial intelligence arm, DeepSeek. Liang is currently making waves in the AI industry with his new company, becoming a straight-up competitor to OpenAI.
Born in Zhanjiang, Guangdong in a fifth tier city, he moved to Chengdu, Sichuan, after graduating, to experiment with different ways of applying AI to various fields, with him not tasting success until he tried finance. He then co-founded the quantitative investment firm Ningbo High-Flyer in 2016 and used mathematics and AI for investment strategies.
His father was a primary school teacher but the names of his parents and relationship status isn’t known.
Unveiling DeepSeek – interview with the founder Liang Wenfeng – h/t @wzihanw
" There’s no mystery. Our team is composed of recent graduates from top universities, Ph.D. interns in their fourth or fifth year, and a few young professionals just a few years into their careers.…
— Anu Hariharan (@anuhariharan) December 28, 2024
Education
Liang Wenfeng graduated from Zhejiang University with a Bachelor of Engineering in electronic information engineering in 2007. He later obtained a Master of Engineering in information and communication engineering back in 2010.
DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng:
>> Studies machine vision at Zhejiang University
>> At 30 in 2015, launches High-Flyer quant hedge fund
>> Makes a fortune (now $8B AUM)
>> Wants to build “human” level AI as side hustle and pitches partners but they initially sceptical
>>… pic.twitter.com/POwrrPluNm
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) January 26, 2025
Career
Back in 2008, Liang Wenfeng formed a team with his classmates to accumulate data related to financial markets. Aside from accumulating data, Liang also led the team in exploring quantitative trading using tools like machine learning and other technologies. Following his graduation, Liang moved to a cheap flat located in Chengdu, Sichuan. During his time there, he experimented with applying AI to various fields before failing in all kinds of ventures.
Later in 2013, Liang made an attempt to integrate artificial intelligence with quantitative trading. He then went on to establish Hangzhou Yakebi Investment Management Co. Ltd. with Xu Jin, and in 2015, they co-founded Hangzhou Huanfang Technology Co. Ltd. The company is known as Zhejiang Jiuzhang Asset Management Co. Ltd. today.
Liang Wenfeng and two other engineering classmates then co-founded the Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management Partnership in February 2016. Three years later, in 2019, Liang founded High-Flyer AI, a company dedicated to research on AI algorithms. Liang then started buying thousands of Nvidia GPUs during 2021 for his AI side project alongside running High-Flyer.
Despite facing a lot of backlash and criticism, Liang announced a development of artificial general intelligence and launched DeepSeek in May 2023. During that month, Liang stated during an interview that High-Flyer acquired over 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs. Most importantly, Liang Wenfeng acquired the Nvidia GPU’s before the US government imposed AI chip restrictions on China.
Liang then released and triggered an AI price war in China in July 2024 with DeepSeek V2. Following the company’s success, Liang Wenfeng appeared on the Symposium alongside various experts from different fields on January 20, 2025. Liang is now considered an AI industry expert.
While his net worth isn’t known, he has a 21% chance of ranking among the top 10 wealthiest individuals globally according to Forbes by the end of 2035. He used just $6 million to make DeepSeek with a team of just fresh graduates from top universities, PhD candidates (even fourth- or fifth-year interns), and young talents with a few years of experience.
He is Liang Wenfeng, CEO of DeepSeek AI. 🚀
5 years ago, he walked away from Wall Street to chase a dream.
His insane journey will blow your mind. (Read below) 👇 pic.twitter.com/iMx7zdSJtf
— Shruti Mishra (@heyshrutimishra) January 27, 2025