DeepSeek, which grew out of High-Flyer, is now threatening to upend the global artificial intelligence supply chain and challenge the seemingly-unassailable US lead in critical frontier AI technologies. The sudden popularity of the 20-month-old firm’s breakthrough technology and its namesake app sparked a massive US and European stock rout on Monday, wiping out close to US$1 trillion in combined market value from chip giant Nvidia Corp and other peers.
Three years ago, Liang Wenfeng’s quantitative hedge fund firm apologized profusely to investors for losing money during a tumultuous period for China’s stock market.
It was a surprising stumble for Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management, which used artificial intelligence to pick stocks and had grown rapidly to become one of the country’s largest quant funds. As the firm navigated through that crisis and its assets shrunk by more than a third from a peak of more than US$12 billion, behind the scenes Liang was laying the groundwork for a new AI startup, DeepSeek.
