Liang Wenfeng

Liang Wenfeng (Chinese: 梁文锋; pinyin: Liáng Wénfēng; born 1985) is a Chinese entrepreneur and businessman who is the co-founder of the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, as well as the founder and CEO of its artificial intelligence company DeepSeek.[1] Liang attended Zhejiang University, and began his career by applying machine learning methods to quantitative finance. Through High-Flyer, he built large-scale computing infrastructure that was later used to support artificial intelligence research, leading to the creation of DeepSeek in 2023. DeepSeek gained international attention following the release of DeepSeek-R1, which analysts described as demonstrating high-level performance with comparatively limited compute resources. In 2025, Liang was named to Time magazine's list of 100 Most Influential People in AI and Fortune's list of the Most Powerful People in Business. In July 2026, Bloomberg News reported that Liang had become the world's wealthiest founder of an AI-model company, with a net worth of $36 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.[2] Liang was born in 1985 in the village of Mililing (米历岭村), Qinba town (覃巴镇), Wuchuan, Guangdong.[3] His parents were both primary school teachers.[4][5][6][7][3] Liang was routinely praised by both locals and teachers alike.[3] Even since middle school, Liang was recalled for being well-known for reading comic books, while also being very proficient in mathematics.[3]