In technology, many entrepreneurs can only get one decisive act. Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is already the second.
Engineers, which are explained by colleagues that they are introspective, marked the first half of the Chinese investment world in the late 2010s, provided powerful returns using artificial intelligence models, and billed billions of dollars. We jointly established hedge funds that collected.
Mr. 8 pivoted in 2023, supported by the benefits and vigilance of Beijing tightening speculative transactions in 2023. He poured money on artificial intelligence, bet on AI chips, and assembled a team to build a Chinese answer to Silicon Valley's front runner Openai.
Two years later, DeepSeek has overturned the world's technical environment. What you need to know about Liang Wenfeng is as follows:
He is a very technical engineer. It puts him on another successful Chinese technical executive line.
Many people pointed out a single culprit when Chinese engineers discussed why the largest investors and high -tech companies in the country could not predict the rise of the generated AI. Chinese companies are hooked on rapid returns in the fierce competitive market.
Armed in these lessons and supported by his own transactions, his wife revealed that his ambition is far beyond commercial use.
He said that his focus was in what China saw as the only real opportunity to catch up with the United States. It means bold and ideal fluctuations with basic AI issues. His main ambition is to create artificial general information or AGI. This is an inevitable goal of building machines that can be considered and learned like humans.
Liang rejected the importance of China when DeepSeek has provided a model at the price of bargains and forced a larger rival to reduce its price, reducing China's competition.
“To be honest, we didn't really care about it. It was what we did on the way,” he said in a widely shared interview with 36kr, a Chinese technical outlet. “Providing cloud services is not our main goals. Our purpose is to achieve the AGI yet,” (Deepseek is almost silent this week and has not responded to comment requests).
In his belief that superhuman artificial intelligence is bent, Lian is very similar to Sam Altoman, the highest executive officer. But the similarities end there. Liang, a modest executive with a deep technical background of AI Engineering, is more suitable for Ponima, a co -founder of China, a co -founder of China, than Silicon Valley's charismatic.
He started as a hedge fund trader. And he focused on pure AI research.
In many ways, Lian's career trains a major change in China's technical landscape.
His 2010 papers in Zhijiang University immediately worked on one of the hottest topics in AI in China. Improvement of intelligent tracking algorithms for surveillance cameras.
Later, the hedge fund he co -founded was alleviated by regulatory pressure and eventually forced to close one of the major investment products.
“Between 2019 and 2023, they wanted to have this side project, so I felt that the Ph.D. had something to do, so DeepSeek was born,” said Alexander. I said.
“But when their main investment products had to be closed in February 2024, it was really overdrive,” he said.
In a way, it was China's crackdown on the private sector that finely adjusted deep seek towards long -term AI research.
He is inevitable to try other entrepreneurs. He even hired a light major.
If you voted for a Chinese AI expert to deliver the first major generated AI break -through in the country, few would have chose Liang. That included the Chinese government.
Deepseek was a private company with no institutional weight of players, such as the clearly supported state, famous alliance, as a major search company Baidu. In the system that supported the insider, Lian was not alone.
But there is a precedent. Huawei, Alibaba, and bytedance, part of the most destructive high -tech companies in China, began outside the spotlights to redefine industries.
Lian's approach was as destroyed as his company's rise. He emphasizes intellectual exploration over pure crushing. His employment philosophy is similarly non -orthodox. The Deep Seek engineering team has joined the literary buff to improve the company's AI model.
“Everyone is on their own journey and bring their own ideas. Therefore, there is no need to push,” he said in a 36kr interview.
In the tough time and technical culture defined by the hierarchy, the outlook is bound to Bohemian. However, Lian claims that if China wants to lead the Frontier AI innovation, it will be necessary.
“When Chatgpt was announced, the whole of China was not confident in pursuing Frontier innovation,” he said.
“Innovation begins with confidence, and we can often see more young people.”
Alexandra Stevenson has contributed to the report from Hong Kong.
