Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, was welcomed as a “hero” upon arriving in Guangdong, his hometown in southern China, for the Lunar New Year celebrations last week.
Wenfeng, who at 40 years old is already a billionaire, was accompanied by his security guards. He is the creator of DeepSeek, the company that launched its artificial intelligence tool internationally on January 20, which is now considered a strong competitor to ChatGPT.
Who is Liang Wenfeng?
A “nerd” in mathematics who aimed to create human-level AI, Liang told his colleagues about his plans early in his career, but none of his business partners believed much in his ambitions.
The current CEO of DeepSeek has never been motivated by money, according to friends, but has always hoped to earn respect in the technology world dominated by the United States. “We grew up together in this village, and we are very proud of him,” said one of the residents of Guangdong to the Financial Times.
And it seems like he has succeeded, as the startup set the tech world on fire when it launched its AI model, DeepSeek-R1. The Chinese company’s artificial intelligence is considered by experts to be more advanced than ChatGPT from OpenAI in some aspects.
However, while the United States is concerned about the access TikTok, also managed by a Chinese company, has to the data of its citizens, an AI tool from a Chinese company has become the center of national security discussions in several countries.
“Just like TikTok, DeepSeek has the ability to collect vast amounts of sensitive data, all vulnerable to state interference,” explained Luke de Pulford, director of the Interparliamentary Alliance on China, to MailOnline.
“In addition to data protection violations, this gives the Communist Party a strategic advantage – they can process and analyze intimate information about hundreds of millions of foreign citizens.”
Photo and video: X. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
