Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, has emerged as the world’s richest AI entrepreneur, with an estimated net worth of $36 billion.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Liang leads the global AI rich list, ranking ahead of Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.
Born in 1985 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, China, Liang was raised by his father, a school teacher. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic Information Engineering from Zhejiang University in 2007 and later completed a Master of Engineering in Information and Communication Engineering at the same institution in 2010.
In 2016, Liang co-founded Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management Partnership. Building on that success, he launched High-Flyer AI in 2019 to advance artificial intelligence research and algorithm development.
He founded DeepSeek in 2023, leveraging the expertise and resources developed through High-Flyer AI. The company has since become one of the world’s fastest-rising AI firms, propelling Liang to global prominence and making him the wealthiest AI founder.
Liang reportedly owns about 78 per cent of DeepSeek, a significantly larger stake than many other AI founders hold in their companies, a major factor behind his rapid rise in wealth.
Beyond his financial success, Liang is ranked among China’s 100 richest individuals. He has also been recognised on Time magazine’s 2025 list of the 100 Most Influential People in AI and Fortune’s 100 Most Powerful People in Business, underscoring his growing influence in the global technology industry.
