The net worth of Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese company DeepSeek, has risen to $36 billion following the company's success in its latest funding round, making him the world's wealthiest developer of artificial intelligence models and placing him ahead of the most prominent founders of competing companies in the sector.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Liang's fortune more than doubled from its previous level of $16.7 billion, driven by a surge in the company's valuation after the latest funding round.
With this leap, Liang surpasses OpenAI President Greg Brockman, whose net worth is estimated at around $25.5 billion and who ranks 100th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as well as Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei, whose fortune stands at approximately $7.98 billion, placing him 491st, according to Singapore's The Straits Times.
By contrast, OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman remains outside Bloomberg's list of the world's 500 wealthiest people, with Forbes estimating his net worth at approximately $3.4 billion.
Liang Wenfeng's rise reflects the rapid growth of DeepSeek, which has emerged in recent months as one of the most prominent global competitors in the development of AI models, amid intensifying rivalry between Chinese and American companies for leadership in this fast-growing sector.