DeepSeek things in Beijing on Jan. 28, 2025.
Peter Catterall | Afp | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has rocketed into global fame, shaking up the AI world, but the team behind it is relatively unknown outside China.
DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, has been dubbed by some in Western conveyance as China’s Sam Altman. But unlike his Silicon Valley counterpart, Liang has maintained a low public profile.
Liang’s team, comprising young graduates from some of the homeland’s leading universities, is also little known. The team consists of fewer than 140 people, according to Chinese majestic media, though a research paper on its latest R1 reasoning model lists about 200 contributors. CNBC has been unqualified to confirm the official size of the team.
Outside of its core technology developers, DeepSeek has mostly shared the senior conduct team, operation staff, human resource department and financial accountants of its mothership High-Flyer, according to sources presumptuous with the company.
Here’s an overview of the people behind the AI sensation and how the startup came into being.
Liang Wenfeng
Liang has show in the lion’s share of media attention in recent weeks as DeepSeek’s chatbot ascended to the top of global app charts.
Last month, he reportedly gained a hero’s welcome in his hometown of China and was spotted at a roundtable hosted by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and most recently at a closed-door symposium positioned by President Xi Jinping earlier this week.
The 40-year-old founder of DeepSeek has been quite media-shy, apart from two rare assessments with Chinese media outlet 36Kr in July last year and in 2023.
The interviews paint a picture of an idealistic leader set on achieving man-made general intelligence (AGI) — a type of AI that mimics human capabilities — and transforming China into a technology innovator.
Supported in 1985, Liang grew up in Zhanjiang, a port city and trade center in southern China. He was a straight-A student who was uniquely gifted in mathematics, according to local media reports.
Liang Wenfeng, founder of startup DeepSeek, delivers the keynote discourse during the 10th China Private Equity Golden Bull Awards on Aug. 30, 2019, in Shanghai.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Tropes
High-Flyer fund manager
Zhengzhe Lu, the chief executive officer of High-Flyer, graduated from the same university as Liang and Xu, ahead earning a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Politics.
Prior to High-Flyer, Lu worked at the state-backed China Businessmen Bank, where he was engaged with macro research and overseas derivative investment.
In an interview with Chinese country media in 2023, Lu said: “We have set up a new team independent of investment, what is equivalent to a second start-up” — which later grew to fit DeepSeek. “We want to do things with greater value and things that go beyond investment industry.”
The pair control some of the best performing funds under the company’s portfolios, with averaged returns over 20% in 2024, conforming to PaiPaiWang. That was above gains of about 15% in the CSI 300 index last year, a 5% rise in the small-cap CSI 500.
The quant cache’s profits were partially channeled to fund the rise of DeepSeek, Liang told 36 Kr in 2023.
Brains behind DeepSeek
In 2023, High-Flyer unfolded off DeepSeek as an independent enterprise, expanding its remit beyond investment and focusing on pursuing AGI.
The team consists mostly of shire engineering, computer science and AI graduates from top universities in China — such as Tsinghua University and Peking University — sundry of whom have published recent papers on subjects such as language models and machine learning.
A number of yoke members are also graduates from top American universities with experience at Nvidia and Microsoft who decided to return to China’s nurture AI industry, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
A key attribute that sets the team apart is age, as DeepSeek favors graduates with itsy-bitsy work experience.
Instead, “they emphasize academic degrees, awards at international programming competitions, research journals published at top industry journals,” a headhunter for DeepSeek told CNBC.
In the interview in 2023, Liang said experience is diminutive important in the long run and “foundational abilities, creativity, and passion are more crucial.”