The brilliant “nerd with a bad haircut”: what is known about the creator of the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek

Liang Wenfeng is a mathematical genius who founded several companies before creating the AI ​​that shook the world.

The success of the Chinese company DeepSeek has shocked the artificial intelligence industry and drawn the world's attention to its previously inconspicuous CEO. According to his colleagues, Liang Wenfeng did not seek fame or fortune, but always hoped to gain respect in the US-dominated technological world. This is written by the Daily Mail.

Now that Liang Wenfeng is responsible for one of the biggest shakeups in the field of artificial intelligence, it is safe to say that he has achieved just that.

Wenfeng, who according to Chinese media recently turned 40, launched his app in the US on the same day as Donald Trump's inauguration.

Since then, the DeepSeek chatbot has become the most popular free app in the world. His meteoric rise to fame has sent rival AI companies plummeting in value and sent shockwaves through Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

His success in challenging US hegemony in AI has earned him the title of national hero in China and secured him an audience with the country's Premier Li Keqiang last week.

Liang Wenfeng, the only AI executive to attend a meeting of China’s top entrepreneurs, shared his thoughts on the sector with senior officials, who said Beijing would “focus on breakthroughs in key core technologies and cutting-edge technologies.”

“When we first met him, he was a very boring guy, a nerd with a terrible haircut, talking about building a cluster of 10,000 chips to train our own models. We didn’t take him seriously. He couldn’t articulate his vision other than to say, ‘I want to build this, and it’s going to be a game-changer,’” one of his business partners told the Financial Times.

Who is Liang? Wenfeng

Liang Wenfeng, the son of two primary school teachers. He grew up in the port city of Zhanjiang, was an excellent student and passionate about mathematics.

He studied mathematics on his own outside of class when he was in high school, and his former teacher told reporters that he always tried to balance “work and leisure, as if he could learn every subject well without spending a lot of time studying.”

After studying college-level mathematics as a teenager, Liang went on to study information technology at China's prestigious Zhejiang University.

The college is located in Hangzhou, a technology hub, but he began his career in finance.

It was only a few years later that he Years after graduating from university, Liang Wenfeng founded the investment firm Jacobi, named after the German mathematician Karl Jacobi.

In 2015, he founded High-Flyer, which later became one of China’s leading hedge funds and helped him make a fortune using AI and algorithms to identify patterns that affect stock prices.

His team used Nvidia chips, and he is said to have brought the company’s best employees with him to found DeepSeek in 2023.

Liang has hired many young graduates from China’s top schools, saying in a recent interview that his firm’s selection criteria were “passion and curiosity.”

According to a former employee, he is actively involved in the company’s day-to-day management and promotes a culture of free and collaborative collaboration.

Liang Wenfeng worked with his team until late at night and even slept in the office as they rushed to complete the projects. His decision to open source DeepSeek was key, as he wanted to buck the trend of big tech companies.

In recent weeks, Beijing has finally started to pay attention to DeepSeek: experts say that while the company was not the “chosen one” among Chinese AI startups from the start, its rapid growth will allow it to access resources and become an example for others.

Now that Liang's plans for DeepSeek have begun to bear fruit, Chinese state media are praising the company's work, which has shown that even with limited computing power, companies can “work wonders.”