Who is Liang Wenfeng, the Chinese billionaire who created the revolutionary Chatbot Deepseek

The new Chinese chatbot DeepSeek It has caused a sensation in the world of technology, displacing Chatgpt as the most unloaded free application in the United States and catapulting its founder, billionaire Liang Wenfeng, fame overnight.

The platform launched on January 20 has been presented as a low -cost option – it is said to height.

The US president, Donald Trump, has spoken. He said it is a “attention call” so that American companies “compete to win.”

More a Friki than a boss

Deepseek was founded in December 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and the following year launched its first great artificial intelligence model.

It is not much known about this 40 -year -old man, born in Guangdong, in southern China, and a degree in Electronic Information and Informatics Engineering from the University of Zhejiang.

In an article in the 36kr technological medium, people familiar with him say that it is “more one Friki That a boss “.

But Liang, which rarely appears in public or grants interviews, is now in the international point of sight.

FThat the only leader in the artificial intelligence industry (AI) selected to attend a publicized entrepreneurial meeting with the second most powerful political chief in the country, Li Qiang.

There they were told entrepreneurs to “concentrate efforts to make their way into key technologies.”

Unlike many American businessmen who come from Silicon Valley, Liang also has experience in finance.

It is the CEO of a coverage fund called High-Flyer, which uses AI to analyze financial data to make investment decisions, which is called quantitative trading.

In 2019, High-Flyer became China’s first quantitative coverage fund to raise more than 100,000 million yuan (about US $ 13,000 million).

In high-flyer, Liang built a fortune using AI and algorithms to identify patterns that could affect actions prices.

His team became an expert in the use of H800 chips manufactured by NVIDIA, the IA chips designer company and one of Wall Street’s favorites, to earn money negotiating with actions.

In 2023 he launched Deepseek, announcing his intention to develop the human level.

Top recruitment

It is said that Liang, who personally participates in Depseek’s investigation, uses the benefits of its operations with coverage funds to pay the highest wages to the best talents in AI.

Doctors from the best Chinese universities -Pekín, Tsinghua and Beihang work – instead of experts from US institutions.

Together with Bytedance, owner of Tiktok, Depseek is known for offering the highest remuneration available for AI engineers in Chinawith personnel in their offices of Hangzhou and Beijing.

In an interview with the national press last year, he declared that in his main team “there are no people who will return from abroad. They are all local. We have to develop ourselves to the best talents.”

He also assured that the Chinese sector of AI “cannot remain an imitator forever.”

“We often say that there is a gap of one or two years between China and the American AI, but the true gap is between originality and imitation. If this does not change, China will always be a follower.”

To the question of why Deepseek’s model surprised so many in Silicon Valley, Liang said: “His surprise is to see that a Chinese company enters its game as an innovative, not only as a follower, which is what the most of the Chinese companies. “

Deepseek’s competitive advantage

Deepseek states that its R1 model was developed with existing technology together with open source software that anyone can use and share free of charge.

But the magazine Wired He assured that the coverage fund of the founder of Deepseek, high-flyer, It has been storing the chips that form the spine of the AI, known as GPU or graphic processing units.

It is estimated that it has acquired between 10,000 and 50,000, according to the MIT Technology Review.

These chips are essential to build powerful AI models that can perform a series of human tasks, from responding to basic consultations to solving complex mathematical problems.

In September 2022, the United States prohibited China for sale of those chips of greater power, a measure described as “the main challenge,” Liang declared in interviews with Chinese media.

It is estimated that the main models of artificial intelligence in the West use about 16,000 specialized chips.

However, Deepseek claims to have trained its AI, R1 model, with 2,000 chips of this type and thousands of lower power chips, which makes your product cheaper.

According to its creators, the chatbot only cost US $ 5.6 million, compared to US $ 5,000 million spent last year OpenAi, chatgpt manufacturer.

Some, among them the American technological billionaire Elon Musk, have questioned this statement, arguing that the company cannot reveal how many advanced chips really used the restrictions.

But experts claim that the Washington prohibition has meant both challenges and opportunities for the Chinese AI industry.

“He has forced Chinese companies as Deepseek to Innovate” to be able to do more with less, says Marina Zhang, associate professor at the Sydney Technology University.

“Although these restrictions raise challenges, they have also stimulated creativity and recovery capacity, aligning with the broader political objectives of China to achieve technological independence”.

The Asian giant has invested a lot in large technologies, from the batteries that feed electric vehicles and solar panels to artificial intelligence.

Turning China into a technological superpower has long been the ambition of President Xi Jinping, so Washington’s restrictions were also a challenge that Beijing assumed.

Opinions found

After its launch, Depseek has caused a massive sale of the main technological values.

Nvidia shares, for example, collapsed 17% at the end of US markets on Monday, a loss of US $ 600,000 million in market value that, according to Bloombergit was the greatest fall in the history of the US Stock Exchange.

The businessman Marc Andreessen described “Deepseek-R1 as the Sputnik moment of AI”, as published on Sunday in X, in reference to the satellite that marked the avant-garde of the space race.

But the Chinese application also raised concern among many.

“I still think that the truth is below the surface in regards to what is really happening”, Told the BBC the veteran Analyst Munter, in allusion to the financial data that Deepseek quotes.

He also wondered if the startup It is being subsidized or if your figures are exact.

“Chatbot is surprisingly good, which makes it difficult to believe,” he added.

For the Minister of Science of Australia, Ed Husic, there are concerns about security.

“There are a lot of questions that will have to be answered on time about the quality, preferences of consumers, data and privacy management”Husic told the Australian chain ABC.

“I would be very prudent about it. You have to weigh this type of issues well,” he added.

Last week, Sam Altman, the Chief of OpenAI, and Larry Ellison, from Oracle, joined President Donald Trump to announce Stargate, a joint company that promises up to US $ 500,000 million in private investment for AI infrastructure: data centers in Texas and other places, along with a promise of 100,000 new jobs.

But with another strong rival in the AI ​​game, some experts believe that the sudden arrival of Deepseek could ask questions about the future of the United States domain in AI and the scale of investments that US companies are planning.