At 40, Liang Wenfeng has emerged as a key determine in China’s rising synthetic intelligence (AI) business, main DeepSeek. It’s an AI startup that has disrupted markets and drawn comparisons to world gamers like OpenAI. A product which Liang Wenfeng describes as not a enterprise mannequin however one thing that’s “pushed out of curiosity”.
DeepSeek launched a free AI assistant final week that the agency says makes use of much less knowledge at a fraction of the price of present providers, triggering a world selloff in tech shares.
Liang Wenfeng was born in Guangdong and educated in Zhejiang. Earlier than founding DeepSeek in 2023, Liang Wenfeng launched Excessive-Flyer Quantitative Funding Administration in 2015, a hedge fund that specialised in algorithmic buying and selling.
Excessive-Flyer was hit by losses when regulators cracked down on such buying and selling up to now 12 months. Nevertheless, it reportedly manages $8 billion in property – offering each the capital and infrastructure to gasoline DeepSeek’s ambitions.
Excessive-Flyer’s investments have additionally performed a pivotal position. By 2022, the hedge fund had constructed a cluster of 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs—essential parts for coaching and operating superior AI methods.
Liang Wenfeng describes DeepSeek as an exploration into what intelligence means, pushed primarily by curiosity quite than rapid business objectives. “Folks might imagine there’s some hidden enterprise logic behind this, nevertheless it’s primarily pushed by curiosity,” Liang stated.
Liang Wenfeng stated he spends his days studying papers, writing code, and taking part in group discussions, like different researchers. Additionally Learn | DeepSeek R-1, reasoning mannequin of China’s AI startup is now obtainable on Perplexity, to assist deep net analysis
Liang’s targeted method matches in together with his willpower to push AI studying ahead. After a long time of counting on innovation from the West, he says China must be making its personal contributions.
“What we see is that Chinese language AI cannot be within the place of following endlessly. We regularly say that there’s a hole of 1 or two years between Chinese language AI and america, however the true hole is the distinction between originality and imitation,” he stated in one other Waves interview in November. “If this does not change, China will at all times be solely a follower — so some exploration is inescapable.”
