After the latest round of funding, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng's fortune has more than doubled, making the Chinese entrepreneur the richest artificial intelligence modeler in the world.
After the latest round of funding, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng's fortune has more than doubled, making the Chinese entrepreneur the richest artificial intelligence modeler in the world.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Liang's fortune is now estimated at $36 billion, up from $16.7 billion. This puts him significantly higher than Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Greg Brockman.
In its analysis, Bloomberg only considered companies whose primary business and primary source of revenue are directly AI models. This list did not include multi-industry conglomerates like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., as well as other AI infrastructure businesses like data centers and chip makers.
Liang's core capital is formed by his controlling stake in DeepSeek. The rapid interest from investors has increased the startup's value almost fivefold compared to April's figures, when the company was valued at $10 billion. In June 2026, DeepSeek attracted another $7.4 billion in investment, with Liang investing $3 billion of his own funds. After this round, the company's total market value soared to $50 billion, and the founder's share, according to Bloomberg, decreased to about 78%.
Born in 1985 in Zhanjiang City in southern China's Guangdong Province, where his father worked as a primary school teacher, Liang studied electronic engineering at Zhejiang University, a prestigious college in Hangzhou, where he also earned a master's degree in information and communications engineering.
Liang founded DeepSeek in 2023 as an AI arm of his hedge fund Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management, which he founded with two former university classmates. The trio began trading as students during the global financial crisis.
In early 2025, DeepSeek shocked the global tech industry by releasing a model that demonstrated performance comparable to American competitors like OpenAI, but at a fraction of their cost. The startup continues to maintain this momentum: the company recently unveiled its latest model, the V4, and publicly announced its compatibility with chips from Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co.
What sets Liang apart from his Silicon Valley peers is the sheer scale of the stake he retains in the company. In the US, building a $50 billion company focused on cutting-edge artificial intelligence typically requires handing over huge stakes to tech giants and venture capitalists. By contrast, retaining nearly 78% of the shares gives Liang a significant increase in personal wealth and a level of control that is unusual for today’s AI founders.
Liang's $36 billion fortune makes him the eighth richest person in China, just behind Chen Tianshi, a billionaire specializing in hardware artificial intelligence and co-founder of Cambricon Technologies.
