DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng gets hero’s welcome in Lunar New Year hometown visit

(MSN) Liang Wenfeng’s hometown in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, is now a tourist attraction based on its DeepSeek connection, local reports say

DeepSeek founder and chief executive Liang Wenfeng received a hero’s welcome during his hometown visit for the Lunar New Year holiday, according to local media and social-media posts, as the Chinese start-up remains under the spotlight for its impact on the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

Liang, 40, on Tuesday returned to Mililing village in Zhanjiang, a port city in southern Guangdong province, where a red banner was raised hailing the low-profile tech entrepreneur as “hometown pride” for bringing honour to the local community, according to social-media posts. His visit on Lunar New Year’s Eve marks the day when Chinese families traditionally hold reunions during this national public holiday.

It also raised the profile of Liang’s hometown, which has turned into a tourist attraction based on its DeepSeek connection, amid an influx of domestic visitors to the remote village, according to a report by Yangcheng Evening News, a state-backed publication based in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong.

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Hangzhou-based DeepSeek sent shock waves through Wall Street and Silicon Valley for developing AI models at a fraction of the cost and computing power that US tech firms like OpenAI, Google and Meta Platforms typically invest in such projects.

The heightened domestic and international attention given to DeepSeek and its founder reflects the AI community’s admiration for the firm’s low-cost development of world-class models – which either surpassed or matched the performance of rival products across a range of industry benchmark tests – in spite of tightened US restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors and related technologies.

An unidentified fellow Mililing villager was quoted by Yangcheng Evening News as saying that Liang was gifted growing up there, adding that “he taught himself senior high-school maths when he was still a junior”.

During the 2002-2010 period when he studied in Zhejiang University, Liang developed an interest in applying machine-learning technology to quantitative trading.

In 2015, Liang founded High-Flyer Quant, which uses deep-learning algorithms to run what has become one of the largest quantitative hedge funds in mainland China. In 2023, the company spun off DeepSeek as an independent enterprise.

There are certain similarities between Liang and Jim Simons, the American quantitative hedge fund manager and mathematician, according to journalist Gregory Zuckerman, who wrote a book about the US billionaire titled The Man Who Solved the Market.

Liang apparently draws inspiration from Simons and agreed to write the preface of the book’s Chinese edition, Zuckerman reported in The Wall Street Journal.

“The publication of this book unravels many previously unresolved mysteries and brings us a wealth of experiences to learn from,” Liang wrote in the preface.

Liang also pointed out that whenever he encounters difficulties at work, he recalls Simons’ words: “There must be a way to model prices.”