DeepSeek Founder Liang Wenfeng's Wealth Surges 40-Fold in a Year, Enters Global Top 50 Richest

The assets of Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek, have surged nearly 40-fold in a single year, according to a survey.

According to Chinese IT specialized media IT之家 today, financial research firm BestBrokers analyzed changes in the assets of global billionaires from July 27 of last year to July 27 of this year based on Forbes real-time billionaire rankings. The analysis showed that Liang's net worth skyrocketed from $1 billion (approx. 1.4 trillion won) to approximately 56 trillion won during this period.

The growth rate stood at 3,850%, the highest among all surveyed subjects.

With DeepSeek's surging valuation driving up his wealth, Liang has also entered the top 50 global billionaire rankings, IT之家 reported.

Chinese financial circles estimate that DeepSeek's valuation jumped from about 1.5 trillion won last year to approximately 400 billion yuan (approx. 84 trillion won) this year.

DeepSeek rapidly emerged as a representative AI company in China following the so-called "DeepSeek shock" last year, which sent ripples through the global market by unveiling a low-cost, high-performance AI model.

As of July 27, the number of billionaires worldwide with a net worth exceeding $1 billion totaled 3,356.

By country, the United States had the most with 990, followed by China with 511.

The combined assets of China's 511 billionaires reached approximately 2,918 trillion won.

China's richest person was Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, the parent company of the video platform TikTok, with a net worth estimated at about 98 trillion won.

In terms of absolute wealth increase, Elon Musk, CEO of U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla, ranked first overall.

Musk's net worth increased by 78.8% over the same period, rising from approximately 574 trillion won to about 1,026 trillion won.

Converted into a daily average, his wealth grew by about 1.2 trillion won every day.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.