Liang Wenfeng: Founder of DeepSeek AI - Background & Investing

DeepSeek's Rise and Its Founder, Liang Wenfeng

DeepSeek, an AI laboratory based in China, is causing significant disruption within Silicon Valley. Their R1 reasoning model is garnering attention due to its claimed efficiency – requiring considerably less computational resources compared to models developed by leading American AI companies.

Notably, the R1 model is also open source, further contributing to its impact. This week has seen the DeepSeek app rapidly ascend the App Store rankings, surpassing even ChatGPT in popularity.

The Background of Liang Wenfeng

The individual at the helm of this groundbreaking company is Liang Wenfeng. His leadership has been particularly noteworthy given the impact DeepSeek has had, even causing a decline in Nvidia’s stock value.

However, DeepSeek isn't Liang Wenfeng’s initial venture. Reports from The Wall Street Journal indicate that he established the investment firm Jacobi in 2013, shortly after completing his university education.

At Jacobi, Liang focused on developing AI algorithms for the purpose of stock selection. Subsequently, in 2015, he founded High-Flyer, an AI-driven hedge fund.

Financial Backing and Open-Source Philosophy

High-Flyer currently provides the financial support for DeepSeek and, as stated by the WSJ, presently manages assets totaling $8 billion.

Liang Wenfeng differentiates himself from many other AI entrepreneurs through his commitment to offering his product free of charge and as open source software.

This approach is facilitated by the robust financial backing of his hedge fund, suggesting that immediate revenue generation isn't a primary concern.