When 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng, founder of the tech world’s latest AI star, DeepSeek, returned to his home village in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong for Lunar New Year’s Eve celebrations last week, he was given a hero’s welcome.
The village honored him with a red banner that said, “Warm congratulations for becoming the pride of his hometown,” according to a translated version of the banner.
Wenfeng’s popularity is partly due to his AI startup, DeepSeek, which rattled U.S. tech stocks when it skyrocketed to the top of app stores last month (it’s still topping iPhone charts) after claiming that its latest AI model matched or surpassed AI from industry leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—but at a fraction of the cost.
While AI from startups like Anthropic can cost $100 million to develop, DeepSeek claims its AI costs less than $6 million for the same functionality.
Related: DeepSeek AI Cost Less Than $6 Million to Develop. Here’s Why Meta and Microsoft Are Justifying Spending Billions.
Liang Wenfeng. Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Wenfeng was already popular in Guangdong before DeepSeek. He became a billionaire after establishing the hedge fund High-Flyer in 2015, which exceeded 100 billion yuan (close to $14 billion) in assets under management by 2021. He is now worth at least $1 billion, according to Forbes.
Residents of his hometown told the Financial Times that as a child he was a “top student” who read comic books and excelled in math.
“We all grew up in this village,” one resident told the publication. “We’re very proud of him.”
Who is Liang Wenfeng?
Wenfeng was born in 1985 and was a straight-A student in school, per the Wall Street Journal.
Before founding DeepSeek, Wenfeng pursued an education in engineering. According to The New York Times, he has a technical background in AI engineering and wrote his 2010 thesis on improving AI surveillance systems at Zhejiang University, a public university in Hangzhou, China. He graduated from Zhejiang with a master’s degree in information and communication engineering.
Related: OpenAI Says AI Industry Disruptor DeepSeek May Have Copied Its Work as Rivals Race to Catch Up
Wenfeng founded the hedge fund High-Flyer in June 2015 at the age of 30, per the Chinese publication QQ.com. He and his team were determined to use math and AI to deliver strong results for clients.
High-Flyer experienced regulatory pressures from 2019 to 2023, leading the team to focus more on AI as a side project and build computing systems with Nvidia graphics cards. Wenfeng officially founded DeepSeek in July 2023. The AI company became more of a focus for him after High-Flyer had to shut down its primary investment product in February 2024, per The Times.
In a 2023 interview with Chinese tech publication 36KR, Wenfeng said that DeepSeek’s goal was general artificial intelligence, or AI that surpasses human cognitive abilities. He also said that AI startups were well-positioned to compete with established companies.
“The market is changing,” Wenfeng told the publication according to an English-translated version of his remarks, which were originally made in Chinese. “The real decisive force is often not some ready-made rules and conditions, but the ability to adapt and adjust to changes.”
Related: Is DeepSeek the Worst Nightmare for VCs? Venture Investors Are Rattled, But Some See a Silver Lining
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