The man who founded DeepSeek, the artificial intelligence company that rattled the U.S. stock market, is 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng, a former hedge fund manager who said he shifted into tech to close the gap between China and the U.S. in the AI industry.

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, has Silicon Valley reeling with its R1 reasoning model, which it claims uses far less computing power than those of American

After studying electronics and communication engineering at Zhejiang University, Liang Wenfeng graduated in 2010 with a master's in information and communication engineering.

Liang Wenfeng, the 39-year-old founder and CEO of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, has emerged as a key figure in China’s push to challenge US dominance in artificial intelligence. But who is this reclusive founder?