The success of Chinese firm DeepSeek has sent shockwaves through the artificial intelligence industry – bringing the world’s attention to its previously low-profile boss.
More than $1trillion was wiped off the value of global technology stocks yesterday after DeepSeek’s advanced AI technology was revealed to the world – sparking panic that the West could fall behind in the AI arms race.
Liang Wenfeng, a hedge fund manager, founded DeepSeek in the city of Hangzou with the proceeds of his successful financial business, although some sceptics have questioned how big a role the Chinese state has in the company’s rapid development.
Now CEO OF DeepSeek, Wenfeng was never motivated by money, according to friends, but had always hoped he would command the respect of the US-dominated tech world.
Now responsible for one of the biggest shake-ups in the AI sphere, it is safe to say the entrepreneur has achieved just that.
The new AI assistant is already poised to wipe almost a trillion dollars off the value of Silicon Valley firms and President Donald Trump has praised its meteoric rise as a ‘wake-up call’ for the US.
Wenfeng, who by Chinese media accounts has just turned 40, launched his app in the United States on the same day as Trump’s inauguration.
The chatbot has since become the most downloaded free app in the country – with its skyrocketing popularity seeing the value of its rival AI firms tumble and sending shockwaves through Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
His success at challenging US dominance in the sector has seen him hailed a national hero in China, and earned him an audience with the country’s prime minister Li Qiang last week.
The only AI boss to attend the meeting of China’s leading entrepreneurs, Liang shared his insights on the sector with the country’s top officials, who said that Beijing will ‘focus on breakthroughs in key core technologies and cutting-edge technologies.’
A mathematics ‘nerd’ who had a vision to create human-level AI, Liang told his colleagues earlier in his career of his plans, but was met with scepticism.
‘When we first met him, he was this very nerdy guy with a terrible hairstyle talking about building a 10,000-chip cluster to train his own models. We didn’t take him seriously,’ one of his business partners told the Financial Times.
‘He couldn’t articulate his vision other than saying: I want to build this, and it will be a game change.’
Pictured is Liang Wenfeng, the founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, speaking at the symposium presided by Chinese Premier Li Qiang on January 20, 2025
Wenfeng, who by Chinese media accounts has just turned 40, launched his app in the United States on the same day as Donald Trump ‘s inauguration
The son of two elementary school teachers, Liang grew up in the port city of Zhanjiang, and was a straight-A student with a passion for mathematics.
He taught himself calculus outside of classes while in middle school, and his former teacher told reporters that he always made sure he could balance ‘work and rest, as if he could learn every subject well without spending a lot of time studying.’
Having studied college-level mathematics while still a young teenager, Liang went on to study information technology at China’s prestigious Zhejiang University.
The college is based in Hangzhou, a technology hub, but he began his career in finance.
Just a few years after graduating he founded investment firm Jacobi, named after German mathematician Carl Jacobi.
The in 2015, he started High-Flyer, which would go on to become one of China’s top hedge funds and build him a fortune by using AI and algorithms to spot patterns that would affect stock prices.
His team used Nvidia microchips, and he is said to have taken his best people with him from the firm to establish DeepSeek in 2023.
Liang hired many young graduates from China’s top schools, saying in a recent interview that his firm’s selection criteria was ‘passion and curiosity’.
He is said to be deeply involved in the day-to-day running of the company and promotes a free and collaborative culture, according to a former employee.
DeepSeek has rattled US tech giants with its impressive performance and tiny budget
The hands-on CEO is said to have worked late into the night with his team, the Wall Street Journal reports, even sleeping in the office as they rush to get projects done.
His decision to make DeepSeek’s code open-source was key, as he wanted to buck the trend of major tech companies.
‘For technologists, having others follow your work gives a great sense of accomplishment,’ he said in an interview last year with 36Kr. ‘Open source is more of a culture rather than a commercial behavior, and contributing to it earns us respect.’
Beijing has finally started to pay attention to DeepSeek in recent weeks, with experts saying that while it was not initially ‘the chosen one’ of Chinese AI start-ups, its rapid ascent will see it given access to resources and held up as an example.
With Liang’s plans for DeepSeek now paying off, Chinese state media has celebrated the company’s work for showing that even with limited computing power, firms can ‘create miracles’.
The company has the ability to match the skills of its Western competitors at what appears to be a fraction of the cost incurred by US-based tech giants.
However, its meteoric ascent has raised questions about how a start-up could have become a market leader so rapidly, apparently side-stepping a US ban on Chinese firms using the most advanced microchips available to domestic tech companies.
The Chinese firm claims it took just two months and cost under $6 million to build an AI model using Nvidia’s less-advanced chips, and launched its iPhone app in the US last week.
The chatbot has since become the most downloaded free app in the country – with its skyrocketing popularity seeing the value of its rival AI firms tumble and sending shockwaves through Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
China hawks have labelled it ‘Communist AI’, with a major concern among Western officials being that the chatbot feeds users Chinese propaganda and disinformation.
Compared to DeepSeek’s rival ChatGPT, the Chinese app produces responses that are much closer aligned with Chinese Communist Party propaganda
When asked about Taiwan, DeepSeek states that the island is part of China and adds that ‘compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are connected by blood’
This includes on Taiwan, a potential flashpoint for future world wars, which it declares ‘an inalienable part of China’.
China’s track record of utilising ostensibly private firms for spying, combined with the rapid rate US citizens have been downloading DeepSeek, has fuelled fears about Beijing’s ability to use China-based firms to access peoples’ private information.
The company will be able to collect information on users’ devices, typing patterns, IP address and more, experts have warned, and would have to hand this over to the Chinese government if instructed to do so.
Experts have now suggested that the company could have had Beijing’s help in sourcing powerful chips as part of the Chinese government’s drive to get ahead in its battle with the West for technological supremacy and harvest information on its enemies.
Luke de Pulford, director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, told MailOnline that the UK and US governments should be worried about the power that could give DeepSeek – and by extension the Chinese government.
‘As with TikTok, DeepSeek has the ability to collect masses of sensitive data, all of which is vulnerable to state interference,’ he said.
‘Aside from violations of data protection, this hands the Communist Party a strategic advantage – they can crunch and analyse intimate information on hundreds of millions of foreign nationals.’
He added that under the Chinese Communist Party’s doctrine of Military-Civil Fusion ‘the line between the private sector and state is increasingly blurred.’
Kayla Blomquist, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and director of the Oxford China Policy Lab, agreed that the collection of people’s data on a mass scale is a possibility.
‘It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to know for sure that there are not backdoors built into a system, that there are not other methods of data exfiltration back to mainland China for strategic purposes on the government’s behalf,’ Blomquist told the BBC.
Shadow Security Minister Alicia Kearns said of DeepSeek: ‘There’s no such thing as low cost, because the security and privacy costs are extremely high – let alone the perverted prism through which many answers will be presented.
‘AI may be the space race of our time, but this time every member of our community has a role to play.
‘If your data is going into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, you’re helping them on this race as they suck every bit of detail about you that they can – even your keystrokes.’
