DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, has disrupted the industry and rattled financial markets after surpassing ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in the US. The company was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng.
Who is Liang Wenfeng?
Liang Wenfeng, 40, is a Chinese entrepreneur with a background in finance. After graduating from Zhejiang University, he co-founded the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer in 2015. At High-Flyer, he leveraged AI-driven trading strategies to predict market trends and inform investment decisions.
In 2021, Liang began purchasing thousands of Nvidia graphics processors as part of an AI side project—well before the Biden administration imposed restrictions on US exports of AI chips to China. At the time, many of his acquaintances dismissed the project as an eccentric hobby with no clear objective.
“When we first met him, he was a 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,” one of Liang’s business partners told the Financial Times.
“He couldn’t articulate his vision beyond saying, ‘I want to build this, and it will be a game changer.’ We thought only giants like ByteDance and Alibaba could achieve such a feat,” the source added.
DeepSeek: From a Side Project to an AI Powerhouse
Although initially considered a mere side venture, DeepSeek became a major focus for Liang, who played an active role in its development and research. He aims to position DeepSeek as a dominant force in AI by recruiting top talent from Chinese universities, offering salaries comparable to those at ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
The DeepSeek app, recently launched, is an AI-driven platform designed for tasks such as natural language processing, data analysis, and machine learning—similar to ChatGPT.
DeepSeek’s Impact on US Markets
Following its launch, DeepSeek sent shockwaves through US markets, particularly affecting Big Tech stocks. Nvidia saw its stock price drop by 17%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 5% on Monday.
At one point, the index plunged enough to erase over $1 trillion from its total value of $32.5 trillion from the previous week, The Guardian reported.