Meet the ‘nerd with a terrible haircut’ who dealt US shocking $1tn blow

Liang Wenfeng is the founder of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek.

His company has been making waves in the industry by rivalling giants like OpenAI, but Mr Wenfeng has maintained a low-key presence while establishing a hedge fund and honing its This week, his company sent shockwaves through Wall Street, dealing a $1trillion blow overnight to the US stock market, and sparked fears the West is no longer ahead in the AI race.

Born in Guangdong, southern China, and educated in Zhejiang province, he launched DeepSeek in 2023, as per reports in Chinese media.

One of his business partners told the : “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.

“He couldn’t articulate his vision other than saying, ‘I want to build this, and

In 2015, Mr Wenfeng established High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management, a hedge fund that created models for automated stock trading and started incorporating machine-learning techniques to enhance these strategies.

Like many other Chinese quantitative traders, High-Flyer suffered losses when regulators tightened their grip on such trading over the past year.

However, it is said to manage $8 (£6) billion in assets, providing substantial . High-Flyer also boasts considerable computing power for AI.

By 2022, it had reportedly accumulated a cluster of 10,000 high-performance A100 graphics processor chips from California-based Nvidia, which are used to construct and operate AI systems, according to a post on WeChat.

Shortly after, the US imposed restrictions on the sale of these chips to China.

He revealed that his daily routine involves reading papers, writing code, and participating in group discussions, much like his fellow researchers.

When DeepSeek was questioned about Mr Wenfeng’s identity, it initially responded by naming a different Chinese entrepreneur with the same name, at least in terms of English spelling.

Mr Wenfeng is adamant about propelling AI learning to new heights, aligning with his vision for of Western innovation.

He said: “What we see is that Chinese AI can’t be in the position of following forever. We often say that there is a gap of one or two years between Chinese AI and the United States, but the real gap is the difference between originality and imitation.

“If this doesn’t change, China will always be only a follower – so some exploration is inescapable.”