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Liang Wenfeng (Chinese: 梁文锋; pinyin: Liáng Wénfēng; born 1985) is a Chinese entrepreneur and businessman who is the co-founder of the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, as well as the founder and CEO of its artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.
Liang Wenfeng | |
|---|---|
| 梁文锋 | |
| Born | 1985 (age 39–40) |
| Education | Zhejiang University (BEng, MEng) |
| Known for | Co-founder of High-Flyer Founder and CEO of DeepSeek |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Information engineering |
| Thesis | Research on target tracking algorithm based on low-cost PTZ camera (2010) |
Early life and education
Liang was born in 1985 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong. His parents were both primary school teachers.[1][2][3][4]
Educated at Zhejiang University, Liang received a Bachelor of Engineering in electronic information engineering in 2007 and a Master of Engineering in information and communication engineering in 2010. His master's dissertation was titled "Research on target tracking algorithm based on low-cost PTZ camera" (基于低成本PTZ摄像机的目标跟踪算法研究), advised by Professor Xiang Zhiyu (项志宇).[1][2][5]
Career
Summarize
Perspective
In 2008, Liang formed a team with his classmates to accumulate data related to financial markets. He also led the team to explore quantitative trading using machine learning and other technologies. This was during the peak of the 2007–2008 financial crisis.[1]
After his graduation, Liang moved to a cheap flat in Chengdu, Sichuan, where he experimented with ways to apply AI to various fields. These ventures failed, until he tried applying AI to finance.[6]
In 2013, Liang attempted to integrate artificial intelligence with quantitative trading and founded Hangzhou Yakebi Investment Management Co Ltd (杭州雅克比投资管理有限公司) with Xu Jin, an alumnus of Zhejiang University. In 2015, they co-founded Hangzhou Huanfang Technology Co Ltd (杭州幻方科技有限公司), which is today's Zhejiang Jiuzhang Asset Management Co Ltd (浙江九章资产管理有限公司).[5]
In February 2016, Liang and two other engineering classmates co-founded Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management Partnership (Limited Partnership) (宁波幻方量化投资管理合伙企业（有限合伙).[6][5][7] The team relied on mathematics and AI to make investments.[1][2]
In 2019, Liang founded High-Flyer AI which was dedicated to research on AI algorithms and its basic applications.[1][6] By this time, High-Flyer had over 10 billion yuan in assets under management.[1]
On 30 August 2019, Liang Wenfeng delivered a keynote speech entitled "The Future of Quantitative Investment in China from a Programmer's Perspective" at the Golden Bull Awards ceremony which sparked heated discussions. Liang stated that the criterion for determining what is quantitative or non-quantitative is whether the investment decision is made by quantitative methods or by people. Quantitative funds do not have portfolio managers making the decisions and instead are just servers. He also stated High-Flyer's mission is to improve the effectiveness of China's secondary market.[1]
In February 2021, Gregory Zuckerman's book The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution was published. Liang wrote the preface for Chinese edition of the book where he stated that whenever he encountered difficulties at work, he would think of Simons’ words "There must be a way to model prices".[1]
During 2021, Liang started buying thousands of Nvidia GPUs for his AI side project while running High-Flyer. Some industry insiders viewed it as the eccentric actions of a billionaire looking for a new hobby. One of Liang's business partners said they initially did not take Liang seriously and described their first meeting as seeing a very nerdy guy with a terrible hairstyle who could not articulate his vision. Liang simply said he wanted to build something and it will be a game changer which his business partners thought was only possible from giants such as ByteDance and Alibaba Group.[8]
In May 2023, Liang announced High-Flyer would pursue the development of artificial general intelligence and launched DeepSeek.[2][6] During that month in an interview with 36Kr, Liang stated that High-Flyer had acquired 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs before the US government imposed AI chip restrictions on China. That laid the foundation for DeepSeek to operate as an LLM developer. He also stated DeepSeek gets funding from High-Flyer.[6][9] This was because when DeepSeek was founded, venture capital firms were reluctant in providing funding as it was unlikely that it would be able to generate an exit in a short period of time. As the goal was long-term, DeepSeek sought employees who had ability and passion rather than experience.[1][6]
In July 2024, Liang was interviewed again by 36Kr. He stated that when DeepSeek V2 was released and triggered an AI price war in China, it came as a huge surprise as the team did not expect pricing to be so sensitive. He also stated that as China's economy develops, it should gradually become a contributor instead of freeriding. What is lacking in China's innovation is not capital but a lack of confidence and knowledge on organizing talent into it. DeepSeek has not hired anyone particularly special and employees tend to be locally educated. When it comes to disruptive technologies, closed source approaches can only temporarily delay others in catching up.[3]
On 20 January 2025, Liang was invited to the Symposium with Experts, Entrepreneurs and Representatives from the Fields of Education, Science, Culture, Health and Sports (专家、企业家和教科文卫体等领域代表座谈会) hosted by Premier Li Qiang in Beijing. Liang, being considered as an industry expert, was asked to provide opinions and suggestions on the annual 2024 government work report.[10][2]
DeepSeek released R1[11], a 671-billion-parameter open-source reasoning AI model, alongside the publication of a detailed technical paper explaining its architecture and training methodology.[12] The model was built using just 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs at a cost of $5.6 million, showcasing a resource-efficient approach that contrasted sharply with the billion-dollar budgets of Western competitors. By 27 Jan DeepSeek surpassed ChatGPT to become the #1 free app on the U.S. iOS App Store.[13] Also, US stocks plummeted and more than $1 trillion was erased in market cap amid panic over DeepSeek.[14]
References
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