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DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng puts focus on | Finance news

January 28, 2025

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng puts focus on

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng places give attention to | finance news

By Eduardo Baptista

BEIJING (Reuters) – Liang Wenfeng, the 39-year-old founder of Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek, has within the matter of weeks turn into the face of China’s tech industry and its hope of overcoming an ever-tightening noose of export controls imposed by the USA.

Liang had stored an extraordinarily low profile till Jan. 20, when he was one of 9 people requested to provide a speech at a closed-door symposium hosted by China’s Premier Li Qiang.

He gave two uncommon media interviews to Chinese language media outlet Waves final yr and in 2023, however aside from that has stayed largely out of the public eye. DeepSeek didn’t reply to a request for an interview.

On the symposium, the millennial’s youthful look contrasted with the grey-haired lecturers, officers and state-owned conglomerate heads sat round him, footage and video revealed by Chinese language broadcaster CCTV confirmed.

However the truth Liang was invited to share his opinions on Chinese language authorities coverage highlights Beijing’s recognition of DeepSeek’s function in probably upending the worldwide AI order, in China’s favour.

DeepSeek launched a free AI assistant final week that the firm says makes use of much less knowledge at a fraction of the associated fee of present companies, triggering a world selloff in tech shares.

Final yr, Baidu CEO Robin Li spoke at a related symposium chaired by the Chinese language premier. Li, who introduced China’s first ChatGPT rival in March 2023, stated in an interview that very same yr China would by no means recreate Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s success and that Chinese language corporations ought to give attention to making use of present AI fashions for industrial functions.

Underneath Liang’s management, DeepSeek intentionally averted app-building. As an alternative, it concentrated analysis expertise and sources on creating a model that might match, or higher OpenAI, and it hopes sooner or later to proceed specializing in cutting-edge fashions that might be utilized by different firms to construct client and enterprise-facing AI merchandise.

Liang’s method stood out in a Chinese language tech industry that was used to taking improvements from overseas, from smartphone apps to electric automobiles, and shortly scaling them up, usually a lot quicker than the nations the place the innovations had been first made.

“China’s AI can’t be in the position of following forever. We often say that there is a gap of one or two years between China’s AI and the United States, but the real gap is the difference between originality and imitation,” Liang stated in an interview with Waves in July final yr.

Liang’s interviews reveal a perception that China’s tech industry had reached a crossroads the place it lacked the arrogance however not the capital needed to have interaction in elementary R&D breakthroughs.

‘CURIOSITY AND DESIRE TO CREATE’

“In the past thirty years, (China’s tech industry) has only emphasized making money, and ignored innovation. Innovation is not solely driven by business, it also needs curiosity and a desire to create,” he stated in July.

DeepSeek has taken the choice to make all its fashions open-source, not like its U.S. rival OpenAI. In open-source fashions, the bottom code is publicly accessible for any developer to make use of and modify at will.

Liang’s interviews reveal he has purchased into the open-source tradition that U.S. tech insiders beforehand argued was one cause the U.S.’s Silicon Valley held an edge over its Chinese language counterparts.

“Even if OpenAI is closed-source, it cannot stop others from catching up…Open-source is like a cultural practice, rather than a business practice…a company that does this will have soft power.”

Liang grew up within the southern metropolis of Guangdong, which during the eighties and nineties led the nation in adopting market capitalism. Liang stated back then he was surrounded by people who valued beginning a business over finding out, however he was more academically inclined.

He would go on to enrol within the elite Zhejiang College at age 17, majoring in Electronics and Communication Engineering earlier than pursuing a grasp’s degree in Data and Communication Engineering, which he accomplished in 2010.

Liang then co-founded a quantitative hedge fund in 2015, which makes use of complicated mathematical algorithms for trading versus human evaluation.

The fund’s portfolio totalled over 100 billion yuan ($13.79 billion) by the top of 2021 however in April 2023, it introduced on its WeChat account that it might increase its remit past the investment industry and focus sources to “explore the essence of AGI”. DeepSeek was created a month later.

OpenAI defines AGI (Synthetic basic intelligence) as autonomous systems that surpass people in most economically worthwhile duties.

DeepSeek’s workers are primarily graduates and PhD college students from China’s high universities, whom Liang believes want to work for DeepSeek as a result of it’s tackling the most important challenges in AI.

“What attracts the best talent is obviously the solving of the world’s hardest problems,” he stated in July.

“Our goal is still to go for AGI.”

($1 = 7.2507 Chinese language yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Modifying by Sharon Singleton)

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