Who is Liang Wenfeng, the man who challenged Silicon Valley

Behind Deepseek, the Chinese app that challenged Silicon Valley, there is Liang Wenfeng, who was defined by his colleagues “a very nerd boy with a horrible hairstyle”. Forty years, native of Guangdong, son of an elementary teacher, Wenfeng graduated in artificial intelligence from the University of Zhejiang, one of the oldest and most prestigious Chinese universities.

A very brilliant student, to the point that he deserved the name of ‘Sam Altman Chinese’ (Altman is the founder of Openai). His career was very simple. In 2015, he founded Quanitative Huanfang (High-Flyer), which soon became one of the major Chinese hedge fund together with two of his classmates.

In the following years, this Hedge Fund has grown rapidly in China, becoming the first to collect the equivalent of $ 15 billion. In 2021, the figure dropped to around 8 billion dollars, but High-Flyer remains one of the most important quantities of the country. In the same period, as reported by the Financial Times, Liang also began to buy thousands of graphic processors from Nvidia (about 2,000), before the administration of Joe Biden began to limit the American chip exports. From his friends, his interest was seen as a simple hobby.

Instead, in 2023, Wengfeng launched Deepseek as the offshoot of High-Flyer, with the aim of developing general artificial intelligence, or a level of IA equal to human intelligence. Speaking with the Chinese Technological newspaper Qtbitai, Wengfeng said that, in putting his team together, he did not look for expert engineers. Instead, he turned to the doctoralism of the best Chinese universities, such as Peking University and Tsinghua who had no experience in the sector.

When in 2022, Washington prohibited Chinese companies accessing avant -garde chips like that of Nvidia, he did not lose heart and spending only 5.6 million dollars developed the new AI model, panicked in panic (and someone also says in the ridiculous) The US technological giants. According to experts, Wengfeng has used a series of engineering tricks such as customized communication schemes among the chips, and has combined them with them successfully.

Moreover, according to FT, Deepseek is also known to give the highest salary to its engineers AI, which are based in the offices of Hangzhou and Beijing. The way of directing the company is also different from the traditional methods, that is, without pre -fired roles or rigid hierarchies. Despite his impressive take -off, he remains to be understood if Deepseek will be able to compete with the Big Tech American who certainly, after this challenge glove launched by the ‘Chinese Sam Altman’, will not be with his hands.