Who is Liang Wenfeng?
Liang Wenfeng is the founder and chief executive of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI lab whose low-cost R1 model shook the technology industry in January 2025, and the co-founder of the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer. Forbes valued him at $46 billion on its China’s 100 Richest 2026 list, published on 4 November, which ranks him third in China 1.
How did Liang Wenfeng make his money?
Through DeepSeek, which he controls, and through the hedge fund that funded it. Bloomberg says the majority of his fortune comes from his controlling stake in DeepSeek, and that High-Flyer’s returns helped pay for the lab’s growth 2. Estimates of his holding range from about 78% to 84%. Forbes says his fortune rose by $34.5 billion in a year after an October funding round valued DeepSeek at more than $75 billion 13.
Early life and education
Liang was born in 1985 in a village in Wuchuan, in the Zhanjiang region of Guangdong, to parents who were both primary school teachers. He taught himself calculus in junior high school and was the top scorer in the Zhanjiang region in the college entrance exam. He entered Zhejiang University at 17, in 2002, and earned a bachelor’s degree in electronic information engineering in 2007 and a master’s in information and communication engineering in 2010 456.
High-Flyer and DeepSeek
As a student he began writing AI algorithms to pick stocks. In 2015 he co-founded High-Flyer with two Zhejiang University classmates, and it grew into one of China’s larger quant funds, with about 70 billion yuan ($10 billion) under management in January 2026 27. In May 2023 he announced that High-Flyer would pursue artificial general intelligence and launched DeepSeek, which is based in Hangzhou. Its R1 model topped the US iOS App Store’s free downloads in January 2025 48. Read Liang Wenfeng’s companies.
A low public profile
Liang rarely speaks in public, and the sources reviewed give little detail about his family or private life 9. Among China’s billionaires he now sits behind Zhong Shanshan and ByteDance’s Zhang Yiming.
Liang Wenfeng net worth
Forbes put him at $46 billion in November 2026, about ₹4.3 lakh crore at ₹94 to the dollar, compared with about $11.5 billion a year earlier by our subtraction of Forbes’ $34.5 billion rise 1. See Liang Wenfeng net worth and our ranking of the top 50 richest people in the world.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Liang Wenfeng?
The founder and CEO of DeepSeek and co-founder of the hedge fund High-Flyer.
What is Liang Wenfeng’s net worth?
$46 billion on Forbes’ China’s 100 Richest 2026 list, third in China.