Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. [AP]
Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. [AP]

The net worth of Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, has grown nearly 40-fold in a year, propelling him into the top 50 of the world's wealthiest people as the company's valuation soared.

According to Chinese IT outlet IT Zhijia, financial research firm BestBrokers analyzed changes in the wealth of billionaires worldwide from July 27 last year to July 27 this year, based on Forbes' real-time billionaire rankings. The analysis found that Liang's net worth jumped from $1 billion to $39.5 billion over the period.

That represents a 3,850 percent increase — the highest among all subjects in the study. In won terms, his wealth grew from approximately 1.4 trillion won ($989 million) to around 56 trillion won.

The surge is attributed to a sharp rise in DeepSeek's valuation. Financial circles in China estimate the company's value climbed from roughly 7.2 billion yuan ($1.07 billion) last year to about 400 billion yuan this year — equivalent to a jump from approximately 1.5 trillion won to around 84 trillion won.

DeepSeek has rapidly emerged as China's leading AI company following what became known as the "DeepSeek shock" — the disruption caused when the startup unveiled a low-cost, high-performance AI model that sent ripples through global markets last year.

As of July 27, a total of 3,356 people worldwide held net assets exceeding $1 billion.

By country, the United States led with 990 billionaires, followed by China with 511. The combined wealth of China's 511 billionaires reached $2.06 trillion.

China's wealthiest individual was Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance — the parent company of short-video platform TikTok — with a net worth of $69.3 billion.

In terms of absolute wealth gains, Tesla CEO Elon Musk ranked first overall.

Musk's net worth rose 78.8 percent over the same period, from $405.6 billion to $725.1 billion. His wealth increased by $319.5 billion in total, equivalent to roughly $875 million per day.


quq@heraldcorp.com