Deepseekova edit in Beijing on January 28.
Peter Catterall | AFP | Getty Images
The startup for artificial intelligence Deepsek has moved to global prominent prominent, shaking the world of AI, but the team behind it is relatively unknown outside China.
Founder of Deepseek, Liang Weenfeng, some in the Western media called as I’m Chinese Altman. But unlike his colleague in the Silicon Valley, Liang held a low public profile.
The Liang team, consisting of young graduates from some leading universities in the country, is also little known. The team consists of Less than 140 people, according to the Chinese state media, although the research work is about his latest R1 reasoning model States about 200 associates. CNBC could not confirm the official size of the team.
Outside its basic technology developers, Deepsek has mostly shared a higher managerial team, operational staff, human resources and financial accountants of its parent fruits, according to sources to the company.
Here’s an overview of the people behind the sensation of AI and how the startup came about.
Liang wenfeng
Liang has received a lion’s part of media attention in recent weeks as Deepseek’s Chatbot Ascent to the top Global applications ladder.
Last month, allegedly received a heroic welcome in his hometown in China and was spotted At the round table hosts the Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, and recently on a Symposium of closed doors chaired by President XI Jinping earlier this week.
The 40-year-old Deepseek founder is quite shy, apart from two rare interviews with Chinese media outlet 36Kr in July last year 2023.
Interviews paint an image of an idealistic leader set to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a kind of AI that imitates human capabilities – and converting China into a technological innovator.
Born in 1985, Liang grew up in Zhanjiang, a port city and a trade center in southern China. Was a straight student who was particularly gifted in mathematics, According to local media reports.
Liang Weenfeng, founder of Startup Deepseek, holds a major speech during the 10th Chinese Private Capital of Golden Bull on August 30, 2019 in Shanghai.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Highly flying fund manager
In 2015, friend Liang and College Jin Xu founded high-Flyer asset management, a quantitative hedge fund that uses complex mathematical algorithms for predicting market trends and investing.
Xu had graduated from Chu Kochen University Honors College of Zhejiang Universitywhich selects top students at Elite University.
There Xu focused his doctoral studies on Robot Autonomous Navigation and Machine Learning – Similar to Liang’s focus of postdoctoral research – and was a key member Visual Navigation project for the Chinese Lunar Research Program.
Xu, who once worked in the development of Huawei Technologies software in the early 2010s, now runs strategies for the development of technology and high-development technology development, His Paipaiwang Private Capital Data Page has shown.
Zhengzhe Lu, CEO of High Brod, graduated from the same university as Liang and Xu, before gaining a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Politics.
Before a high flyer, LU worked at the State China Merchants Bank, where he was engaged macro research and foreign derivative investment.
IN Interview with Chinese state media in 2023Lu said: “We founded a new team independent of investing, which is equivalent to another start-up”-which later became Deepseek. “We want to do things with a greater value and things that go beyond the investment industry.”
The pair manages some of the best funds in accordance with the company portfolio, with an average return over 20% in 2024, Paipaiwang states. This was above the gains of about 15% in the CSI 300 index last year, which is a 5% increase in CSI 500 with small caps.
Quantum fund profit is partly aimed at financing the increase in Deepseek, Liang said 36 Kr 2023.
The brain behind Deepseek
2023, the high Flyer took place Deepsek as an independent company, expanding its supervision outside the investment and focusing on Continuing agi.
The team mainly consists of local engineering, computer sciences and AI graduates at top universities in China – such as Tsinghua University and Peking University – many of which have published recent works on subjects such as linguistic models and machine learning.
Numerous team members are also graduated from top American universities with experience in Nvidia and Microsoft who have decided to return to the Chinese growing AI industry, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
The key attribute that allocates the team is age, because deepseek favors graduates with less work experience.
Instead, “they emphasize academic diplomas, awards at international programming competitions, research papers published in Top Industry Journals,” Deepseek head head told CNBC.
In an interview In 2023, Liang said that experience is less important in the long run, and “fundamental abilities, creativity and passion are more important.”
2024He said that even though the first 50 talent in Ai may not have been in China, Deepseek aimed to cultivate his own.
It seems that top graduates have attracted the company because of their own allegedly higher wages and higher degrees upward management than it can be found in a larger technological company.
Zihan Wang, former Deepseek employee who talked to the MIT Technology review in JanuaryHe said he was assigned abundant computer resources and freedom of experimentation in Deepsek.
