In the tide of the times, there are always some individuals who break conventions with their unique talents and firm beliefs, paving their extraordinary paths. Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is such a legendary figure. His life trajectory began in a small village in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, traversing the turbulent stock market and ultimately stirring the waves in the field of artificial intelligence.
In 1985, Liang Wenfeng was born in Mililing Village, Qimba Town, Wuchuan City, Zhanjiang. It was a quiet little village, where his parents were ordinary elementary school Chinese teachers, lacking a powerful background and abundant resources, relying solely on his own efforts. Growing up in such an environment, Liang Wenfeng early on demonstrated a strong desire for knowledge and a talent for mathematics.
During elementary school, he attended Meiling Primary School near his hometown, traversing rural paths with his backpack while harboring infinite yearnings for the outside world. In middle and high school, he entered Wuchuan No. 1 Middle School thanks to his outstanding academic performance. In the world of mathematics, he was like a free fish, swimming freely. During middle school, he self-taught high school mathematics with his talent and effort and, not satisfied with that, began to peruse university mathematics textbooks. Those complex formulas and theorems appeared to him as puzzles waiting to be solved; each time he solved one, he felt endless joy.
In 2002, for Liang Wenfeng, it was an important turning point in his life. That year, he stepped onto the battlefield of the college entrance examination. Inside the examination room, he wrote vigorously, unleashing the knowledge he had accumulated over the years. Eventually, he achieved an exceptional score of 806, becoming the top student at Wuchuan No. 1 Middle School, ranking 14th in Zhanjiang and around 100th in Guangdong Province. This result allowed him to smoothly enter Zhejiang University, choosing the electronic information engineering major, marking a new chapter in his life.
On the campus of Zhejiang University, Liang Wenfeng eagerly absorbed the nutrients of knowledge. His undergraduate major was electronic engineering, and he had a unique talent for mathematics. By chance, he came into contact with financial trading, which was like a ray of light illuminating his world, allowing him to find the perfect combination of the twoโthe stock market. From that moment on, he dived headfirst into the world of financial trading, developing a strong interest in it.
In 2008, at the age of 23, Liang Wenfeng was still in his second year of a master's program. With a capital of 80,000 yuan, he bravely stepped into the A-share market, starting to experiment with automated trading. At that time, he perhaps did not realize that this decision would completely change his life. In the risky and opportunity-filled battlefield of the stock market, he continuously explored automated trading strategies with his intelligence and keen insight into mathematics.
In 2010, another significant milestone in his life occurred. That year, he graduated with a master's degree, while the stock market was quite sluggish. However, Liang Wenfeng managed to earn 1 million yuan through some automated trading strategies. This news spread across the campus, and he instantly became the center of attention, hailed by classmates as the 'Campus Stock God.' At that moment, his name resonated throughout the campus, becoming an idol in the hearts of many.
After graduation, Liang Wenfeng did not choose to follow the conventional path of employment or entrepreneurship; instead, he plunged into the A-share market and became a retail investor. He continuously attempted to write strategies in a quantitative, automated manner and practice them in the market. The repeated failures did not discourage him; rather, they strengthened his conviction. It is said that he once left Hangzhou, rented a room in Chengdu, and focused solely on trading stocks for three years. During those three years, he faced the ups and downs of the stock market alone, bearing immense pressure. Had this trading venture failed, he might have become a cautionary tale, coming from a prestigious school but not engaging in proper work, even being perceived as having a gambling addiction. But he did not give up, persistently sticking to his choice.
Finally, in 2013, his persistence and efforts paid off. He earned a considerable amount of money from the stock market, ending his status as an unemployed retail investor and began institutionalizing himself. That year, he and his classmate Xu Jin established Hangzhou Jakobiy Investment Management Co., Ltd. Although they established a company, the challenges they faced did not diminish. Generally speaking, asset management companies need to issue private equity products, file registrations, and then raise funds for investment. However, at the Jakobiy stage, they were likely still in a similar state to their previous retail investor status, lacking the qualifications to issue products and raise capital, merely having a company identity, with most of their work focused on continuous research, refining, validating, and improving quantitative trading strategies.
However, the road to entrepreneurship is always fraught with difficulties. After two years, the company Hangzhou Jakobiy faced some issues, possibly needing to transition to a private equity firm, but the company did not meet certain requirements and was ultimately abandoned. Nevertheless, Liang Wenfeng did not let this setback defeat him. In 2015, he and Xu Jin reestablished a new companyโHuanshu Technology, embarking once again on the entrepreneurial path, beginning to pursue private equity.
In 2015, when Huanshu was recruiting at Tsinghua University's Shuimu Community, it was mentioned that Liang Wenfeng personally turned an initial investment of 80,000 yuan in 2008 into a profit of 100 million over seven years. If this news is true, his return rate is simply astonishingโ1250 times in seven yearsโplacing him alongside Beijing traders, making him one of the fastest retail investors in the A-share market, and very likely the champion of returns in the domestic stock market. Of course, if this 100 million profit was accumulated during the Jakobiy phase through raising external funds and then sharing profits, it would mean significant external leverage was applied.
The years 2015 to 2017 were the most critical phase of Liang Wenfeng's stock trading career. During this period, all his early explorations in quantitative trading finally bore fruit. He successfully transformed into a private equity institution, and asset management reached a certain scale. In 2016, Huanshu launched its first complete AI strategy, and in 2017, it fully AI-implemented its investment strategies. Their high-frequency trading AI strategies matched the characteristics of the A-share market very well, achieving outstanding performance. In 2017, Huanshu's quantitative managed asset scale surpassed 3 billion, and in 2018, it won the Private Equity Golden Bull Award. Since then, the development of Huanshu Quant has been unstoppable, with managed funds exceeding 10 billion in 2019 and 100 billion in 2021.
However, as the scale continued to expand, problems gradually emerged. By the end of 2021, possibly due to its large scale, over 100 products under Huanshu Quant experienced a performance decline of more than 10%, resulting in asset losses for investors. Subsequently, Huanshu Quant began to gradually reduce its asset management scale. By the end of 2024, Huanshu Quant's managed scale was 45 billion, with 63 fund products, showing significant performance differentiation. Among them, 29 quantitative long products maintained slight profits, while 36 quantitative hedging products all incurred losses. Certainly, the market conditions and policies in 2024 had some impact, as the CSRC imposed significant restrictions on quantitative trading, preventing their high-frequency products from functioning normally.
After achieving great success in the stock market, Liang Wenfeng did not stop his exploration. On October 21, 2016, the first stock position generated by deep learning algorithm models from Huanshu was launched for real trading. This event became another turning point in his life, marking the beginning of his rapid progress in the AI field. Previously, algorithms mainly relied on linear models and traditional machine learning algorithms, with model calculations primarily depending on CPUs. From this day on, Huanshu began using GPUs for computation.
In 2019, Liang Wenfeng keenly sensed the immense potential in the AI field and began to procure GPUs on a large scale, developing the Huanshu 'Firefly No. 1' AI cluster. This cluster was equipped with 500 graphics cards, interconnected by a 200Gbps high-speed network, functioning as a powerful intelligent brain, providing strong computational support for his AI research. In 2020, 'Firefly No. 1' had a total investment of nearly 200 million yuan, equipped with 1,100 accelerator cards, and officially went into operation. Looking at this achievement that embodied his efforts, Liang Wenfeng felt a deep sense of pride, knowing he had taken a solid step in the AI field.
In 2021, Huanshu was thriving, and Liang Wenfeng invested 1 billion in building 'Firefly No. 2.' This time, 'Firefly No. 2' was equipped with about 10,000 NVIDIA A100 graphics cards, breaking through the physical limitations of the first phase and doubling its computing power. Such powerful computational capacity gave Huanshu a significant advantage in the AI field. However, as the scale of quantitative trading continued to grow, making profits became increasingly difficult. Coupled with the poor market trends in 2023-2024, retail investors expressed their grievances, and regulatory bodies began to oversee quantitative trading. Since 2021, Huanshu began to reduce its asset management scale, nearly halving it. The hardware and computational power prepared for quantitative trading also became idle.
But Liang Wenfeng did not let these resources go to waste; he once again demonstrated keen insight. In 2023, he recognized the prospects in the field of general artificial intelligence and officially founded Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Fundamental Technology Research Co., Ltd. in July, focusing on the research and development of large AI models. During the founding of DeepSeek, he faced numerous difficulties and challenges, including financial pressure, talent shortages, and technical problems, but he never gave up.
In less than a year, in May 2024, DeepSeek released the hybrid expert language model DeepSeek - V2. The launch of this model was like a heavy bomb, attracting widespread attention in the AI field. With its outstanding performance and low cost, DeepSeek earned the nickname 'Pinduoduo of AI.' On December 26 of the same year, DeepSeek launched and open-sourced the DeepSeek - V3 model, which is the version most of us used during the Spring Festival. The entire training process took less than 2.8 million GPU hours, costing about 40 million yuan, a result that once again shocked the world.
On the night of January 20, 2025, Liang Wenfeng and his team once again surprised the world with the release of DeepSeek - R1. This model's performance on tasks such as mathematics, coding, and natural language reasoning was on par with that of OpenAI's official version o1, and it also opened sourced model weights and training technologies simultaneously. This news immediately stirred up a huge wave worldwide, as DeepSeek directly broke the monopoly of American cutting-edge AI technology and computing resources. Because it was both free and open-source, it allowed more people to access and use advanced AI technology.
Looking back on Liang Wenfeng's life journey, he transformed from an ordinary village child into a legend in the stock market through his efforts and talents, and became a pioneer in the AI field. His story tells us that as long as there are dreams and firm beliefs, and constant effort, one can surely shine with their own light on the stage of the times. He is like a fearless warrior, continuously exploring and moving forward in unknown territories, showing us the infinite possibilities of an ordinary person achieving their dreams through hard work.
