DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng puts deal with Chinese innovation

By Eduardo Baptista

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

Liang had kept a particularly low profile until Jan. 20, when he was one in every of nine individuals asked to provide a speech at a closed-door symposium hosted by China’s Premier Li Qiang.

He gave two rare media interviews to Chinese media outlet Waves last 12 months and in 2023, but other than that has stayed mostly out of the general public eye. DeepSeek didn’t reply to a request for an interview.

On the symposium, the millennial’s youthful appearance contrasted with the grey-haired academics, officials and state-owned conglomerate heads sat around him, pictures and video published by Chinese broadcaster CCTV showed.

But the very fact Liang was invited to share his opinions on Chinese government policy highlights Beijing’s recognition of DeepSeek’s role in potentially upending the worldwide AI order, in China’s favour.

DeepSeek launched a free AI assistant last week that the firm says uses less data at a fraction of the fee of current services, triggering a world selloff in tech stocks.

Last 12 months, Baidu CEO Robin Li spoke at the same symposium chaired by the Chinese premier. Li, who announced China’s first ChatGPT rival in March 2023, said in an interview that very same 12 months China would never recreate Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s success and that Chinese firms should deal with applying existing AI models for business purposes.

Under Liang’s leadership, DeepSeek deliberately avoided app-building. As a substitute, it concentrated research talent and resources on making a model that would match, or higher OpenAI, and it hopes in the long run to proceed specializing in cutting-edge models that will probably be utilized by other corporations to construct consumer and enterprise-facing AI products.

Liang’s approach stood out in a Chinese tech industry that was used to taking innovations from abroad, from smartphone apps to electric vehicles, and quickly scaling them up, often much faster than the countries where the inventions were first made.

“China’s AI cannot be within the position of following endlessly. We frequently say that there’s a gap of 1 or two years between China’s AI and the US, but the actual gap is the difference between originality and imitation,” Liang said in an interview with Waves in July last 12 months.

Liang’s interviews reveal a belief that China’s tech industry had reached a crossroads where it lacked the boldness but not the capital needed to interact in fundamental R&D breakthroughs.

‘CURIOSITY AND DESIRE TO CREATE’

“Up to now thirty years, (China’s tech industry) has only emphasized being profitable, and ignored innovation. Innovation shouldn’t be solely driven by business, it also needs curiosity and a desire to create,” he said in July.

DeepSeek has taken the choice to make all its models open-source, unlike its U.S. rival OpenAI. In open-source models, the bottom code is publicly available for any developer to make use of and modify at will.

Liang’s interviews reveal he has bought into the open-source culture that U.S. tech insiders previously argued was one reason the U.S.’s Silicon Valley held an edge over its Chinese counterparts.

“Even when OpenAI is closed-source, it cannot stop others from catching up…Open-source is sort of a cultural practice, reasonably than a business practice…an organization that does this may have soft power.”

Liang grew up within the southern city of Guangdong, which throughout the eighties and nineties led the country in adopting market capitalism. Liang said back then he was surrounded by individuals who valued starting a business over studying, but he was more academically inclined.

He would go on to enrol within the elite Zhejiang University at age 17, majoring in Electronics and Communication Engineering before pursuing a master’s degree in Information and Communication Engineering, which he accomplished in 2010.

Liang then co-founded a quantitative hedge fund in 2015, which uses complex mathematical algorithms for trading versus human evaluation.

The fund’s portfolio totalled over 100 billion yuan ($13.79 billion) by the tip of 2021 but in April 2023, it announced on its WeChat account that it will expand its remit beyond the investment industry and concentrate resources to “explore the essence of AGI”. DeepSeek was created a month later.

OpenAI defines AGI (Artificial general intelligence) as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically precious tasks.

DeepSeek’s employees are mainly graduates and PhD students from China’s top universities, whom Liang believes prefer to work for DeepSeek since it is tackling the most important challenges in AI.

“What attracts the most effective talent is clearly the solving of the world’s hardest problems,” he said in July.

“Our goal continues to be to go for AGI.”

($1 = 7.2507 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Sharon Singleton)