DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng’s net worth has more than doubled to $36 billion after the company secured new funding.
He is now the world’s richest person among founders of companies focused on AI model development.
The jump comes after DeepSeek closed a $7.4 billion funding round in June 2026, valuing the company at $50 billion.
Liang also invested about $3 billion of his own money in the round and still owns about 78% of the company.
DeepSeek was founded in 2023 as an arm of hedge fund firm High-Flyer Asset Management.
Before the US tightened chip export restrictions, the company had purchased a large number of high-performance graphics chips, giving DeepSeek a computing power advantage to develop AI models.
DeepSeek first came to global attention in early 2025 after launching an AI model that offered performance comparable to competitors such as OpenAI, but at a much lower development cost.
The company also introduced the DeepSeek V4 model, which is designed to be compatible with Huawei chips, thus strengthening the Chinese-made AI ecosystem.
This development shows that China's technology landscape is now increasingly shifting from traditional internet companies to the artificial intelligence industry.
With increasing capital support from the private sector and the government, DeepSeek is seen as one of the key players that will drive the future of China's AI.
