Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Elaine Kurtenbach

Upstart Chinese AI company DeepSeek's founder started out as a low-key hedge fund entrepreneur

China DeepSeek AI - (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The 40-year-old founder of China’s DeepSeek, an AI startup that has startled markets with its capacity to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI, kept a low profile as he built up a hedge fund and then refined its quantitative models to branch into artificial intelligence.

Liang Wenfeng, who founded DeepSeek in 2023, was born in southern China's Guangdong and studied in eastern China's Zhejiang province, home to e-commerce giant Alibaba and other tech firms, according to Chinese media reports.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.