Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, has become the richest founder of an AI model company in the world.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his fortune has risen to 36 billion dollars, putting him ahead of sector leaders such as Greg Brockman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic.
This ranking focuses specifically on companies whose main revenue is generated by AI models, excluding hardware suppliers and diversified conglomerates such as Tencent or Alibaba.
The spectacular increase in Liang’s wealth follows a substantial rise in DeepSeek’s valuation, which quintupled from the initial 10 billion dollars in April.
After a funding round in June 2026, which raised 7.4 billion dollars and valued the company at 50 billion dollars, Liang’s personal stake is estimated at 78 per cent, despite his own investment of 3 billion dollars.
Such retention of shares is rare compared with founders in Silicon Valley, who often hand over large parts of their companies to venture capitalists and tech giants to reach similar valuations.
Liang’s path to success began at Zhejiang University, where he obtained degrees in electronic and communication engineering.
He initially founded the hedge fund Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management together with two classmates, capitalising on trading profits from the 2008 financial crisis.
Thanks to this financial base, he was able to acquire a huge stock of high-quality graphics chips before US trade restrictions came into force, giving DeepSeek the computing power it needed to innovate independently of traditional venture capital funding.
Breakthrough in the global AI market
DeepSeek, founded in 2023 as a spin-off from the AI arm of his hedge fund, attracted international attention in early 2025.
The company developed a model that could compete in performance with US rivals, but operated at significantly lower costs.
The company continues to further develop its technology and recently unveiled the V4 model, emphasising that it can run on Huawei hardware.
This shift reflects a broader change in the landscape of Chinese wealth, away from the era of consumer internet led by figures such as Jack Ma, towards state-backed artificial intelligence.
DeepSeek has grown from a private project into a strategic national asset. Liang is currently in eighth place among the richest individuals in China, just behind Chen Tianshi, co-founder of Cambricon Technologies.
Patryk Goron
Ltd