Liang Wenfeng Photo: VCG / Visual China Group / Courtesy of Getty Images
Lian’s wealth growth was the result of another round of investment in the company. In June, DeepSeek completed a new $7.4 billion funding round, after which its valuation increased fivefold compared to April—from $10 billion to $50 billion. According to Bloomberg, Liang owns about 78% of the company, which has more than doubled his net worth—from $16.7 billion to $36 billion. DeepSeek representatives did not respond to the agency’s request for comment.
According to Bloomberg, Liang has surpassed other well-known founders of companies developing AI models in terms of net worth. The net worth of Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei is estimated at approximately $8 billion, while that of OpenAI President Greg Brockman is estimated at $25.5 billion. The top five wealthiest entrepreneurs in this industry also include Liu Debin, founder of the Chinese company Zhipu, with a net worth of $11.6 billion, and Yan Junjie, founder of Minimax, whose net worth is estimated at $2.2 billion. Bloomberg notes that the ranking includes only companies whose core business is related to the development of AI models. Owners of diversified technology corporations, such as Alibaba and Tencent, as well as chip manufacturers and data center operators, were not included in the calculation.
With a net worth of $36 billion, Liang also ranks among China’s eight richest people, according to Bloomberg’s estimate.
DeepSeek was founded in 2023 as an independent project that grew out of the research division of the hedge fund Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management, which Liang established together with former classmates. The company gained worldwide recognition in early 2025 after releasing language models that demonstrated results comparable to leading American developments, at a significantly lower development cost. This heightened investor interest in the Chinese startup and became one of the factors behind the reassessment of the value of AI companies and the effectiveness of Western tech giants’ multibillion-dollar investments in the development of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
