DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, has Silicon Valley reeling with its R1 reasoning model, which it claims uses far less computing power than those of American AI leaders — and, it’s open source. The DeepSeek app has shot to the top of the App Store charts this week, dethroning ChatGPT.
But who is Liang Wenfeng, the leader of the company so disruptive that it sent Nvidia shares tumbling? According to the Wall Street Journal, DeepSeek isn’t the entrepreneur’s first company. In 2013, a few years after graduating from university, Liang founded the investment firm Jacobi, where he wrote AI algorithms to pick stocks. Two years later, he started High-Flyer, the AI-supported hedge fund that backs DeepSeek and that, according to the WSJ, currently manages $8 billion.
Liang distinguishes himself from other AI founders by making his product free and open source; with the backing of his own hedge fund, he doesn’t seem to need the extra money.
