DeepSeek founder and Chief Executive Officer Liang Wenfeng has become the world’s wealthiest founder of an artificial intelligence (AI) model startup after the Chinese company’s latest funding round significantly boosted its valuation, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bloomberg estimates Liang’s net worth has climbed to around $36 billion from approximately $16.7 billion, placing him ahead of Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Greg Brockman among the founders of AI model companies.
The milestone comes months after DeepSeek faced allegations from leading US artificial intelligence firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, over the alleged misuse of their AI models to strengthen its own technology.
In February, OpenAI accused DeepSeek of using methods designed to replicate capabilities developed by OpenAI and other American AI companies.
Chinese AI firms face allegations
Later that month, alleged that DeepSeek, along with Chinese AI firms MiniMax and Moonshot, had misused its Claude AI model through what it described as “industrial-scale campaigns.” Anthropic claimed the companies created roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts and generated more than 16 million interactions with Claude using a process known as AI model distillation.
In a letter to the US House Select Committee, the ChatGPT maker wrote: “Ahead of DeepSeek’s expected Lunar New Year release of a new, more powerful model, we are providing the Committee with an updated assessment of its evolving distillation tactics.”
While Anthropic described distillation as a legitimate AI training technique, it warned that the method can also be misused to obtain advanced capabilities from rival AI laboratories at a fraction of the time and cost required to develop them independently.
According to Bloomberg, the bulk of Liang’s fortune is tied to his ownership of DeepSeek. The company’s valuation surged from $10 billion in April to $50 billion following a $7.4 billion funding round completed in June 2026. Bloomberg estimates that Liang invested $3 billion in the financing and continues to own about 78% of the company.
Unlike many founders of US-based AI startups, who have substantially diluted their stakes through successive fundraising rounds, Liang has retained majority ownership, driving the sharp rise in his personal wealth.
The Bloomberg rankings considered only companies whose primary business and revenue are derived directly from AI foundation models. Diversified technology giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, along with AI infrastructure businesses including semiconductor and data centre companies, were excluded from the comparison.
Born in 1985 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, Liang studied electronic engineering at Zhejiang University before completing a master’s degree in information and communication engineering.
He launched DeepSeek in 2023 as a spin-off from the AI division of Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management, the hedge fund he co-founded with two university classmates.
Bloomberg reported that High-Flyer had accumulated a substantial stockpile of advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) before tighter US export controls came into force, giving DeepSeek access to the computing power needed to train its AI models.
Global recognition
DeepSeek gained global recognition in early 2025 after unveiling an AI model that matched the performance of leading US systems while reportedly being developed at a significantly lower cost. The company has since released its V4 model and said it is compatible with AI chips designed by Huawei.
With an estimated fortune of $36 billion, Bloomberg now ranks Liang as the eighth-richest person in China, trailing Cambricon Technologies co-founder Chen Tianshi.