China’s newest entrant to the billionaire club has established himself as a dominant voice in the tech world. Unlike OpenAI’s Sam Altman, he is not a Silicon Valley AI seed. This is Liang Wenfeng, 40, the founder of DeepSeek. Forbes reported his net worth to be $11 billion after his quantitative hedge fund, High-Flyer Capital Management, surpassed several US tech stocks.
Liang Wenfeng is China’s leading tech billionaire and co-founded High-Flyer in 2015. His DeepSeek AI model took the world by storm, giving OpenAI’s ChatGPT stiff competition. With an 84% stake in DeepSeek and nearly 76% in High-Flyer his billionaire status remains cemented as several reports suggest the increasing valuation of the AI model.
Who is Liang Wenfeng?
The techie billionaire holds a degree in engineering and a Master of Science in Engineering from Zhejiang University. Using the power of math and AI, he founded High-Flyer with his college roommate and revolutionised investing with AI. By 2019, it became China’s best-performing and largest quantitative trading firm. After reaching a peak of $14 billion in assets in 2021, the firm’s performance eventually declined to $6 billion.
However, in 2023, he made a mega comeback with DeepSeek and in November 2025 became the newest member on China’s 100 richest list. The AI model is also laying waste to the US stock market rally, raising doubts about whether it can replace Google and OpenAI.
Liang Wenfeng’s vision
Liang Wenfeng’s sole mission is to become a homegrown leader and make China technologically self-reliant. Today, DeepSeek hires several students from China and pays heavily, at par with local giants like TikTok and ByteDance. Driving a huge chunk of revenue, Liang Wenfeng had previously expressed how China needed to be braver in the tech space. In a 2024 interview, he had noted, “For years, Chinese companies have been accustomed to leveraging technological innovations developed elsewhere and monetising them through applications,” he said. “But this isn’t sustainable. This time, our goal isn’t quick profits but advancing the technological frontier to drive ecosystem growth.”
“What we lack isn’t capital but confidence and the ability to organise high-calibre talent for effective innovation,” Liang added.
