On July 14th, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was updated, showing Liang Wenfeng, a native of Zhanjiang, as the richest person in AI with a fortune of $36 billion.

The founder of DeepSeek saw his net worth skyrocket by $19.3 billion overnight, propelling him to 63rd place on the global rich list. This represents an increase of $19.9 billion compared to the same period last year, equivalent to a daily gain of $54 million.

Among the AI company founders listed abroad, there are Dario Amodei of Anthropic with $7.98 billion and Greg Brockman of OpenAI with $25.5 billion.

However, Liang Wenfeng's wealth surpasses that of Amodei and Brockman combined by $2.4 billion.

You're probably curious about how Liang Wenfeng achieved such rapid wealth growth.

In just two months, his estimated net worth quintupled. In April of this year, DeepSeek initiated its first round of financing with a valuation of approximately $10 billion. By June, the post-investment valuation had soared to $50 billion. With a financing round of $7.4 billion, Liang Wenfeng contributed $20 billion (approximately $2.8 billion) himself, Tencent followed with $10 billion, CATL with $5 billion, and JD.com, NetEase, and IDG each with $3 billion.

It is almost unheard of in the primary market for the founder to contribute the largest amount in a financing round.

What's even more counterintuitive is that DeepSeek was previously labeled as a company that did not seek financing, commercialization, or roadshows. Founded in July 2023 as a spin-off from High-Flyer Quantitative Trading, Liang Wenfeng had accumulated sufficient resources in the quantitative trading circle. His private equity fund, High-Flyer, once managed assets exceeding 100 billion yuan, so he indeed had enough money not to need external capital.

However, after DeepSeek-V3 and R1 gained widespread attention, he could no longer sustain the investment in computing power alone. His stance against financing began to waver.

When we compare Liang Wenfeng with Silicon Valley AI founders, the information gap becomes even more glaring.

Anthropic is valued at $380 billion, with each of the seven co-founders holding a limited stake. Amodei's personal net worth is approximately $8 billion. Brockman holds a significant amount of equity in OpenAI, valued at $25.5 billion, but with OpenAI valued at $852 billion, his stake is only about 3%. In contrast, Liang Wenfeng holds approximately 78% of DeepSeek. A company valued at $50 billion, with 78% belonging to one individual.

A 78% concentrated stake means almost no secondary market liquidity. The $36 billion figure is a paper value based on Bloomberg's valuation model, not readily convertible cash. Similarly, Chen Tianshi's net worth at Cambricon is also calculated based on his equity stake, with fluctuations in stock price causing his wealth to swing between trillions and hundreds of billions yuan from one quarterly financial report to the next.

The gap between a paper billionaire and a cash billionaire lies in an IPO.

The rules of AI wealth creation are being rewritten by a Chinese individual with a quantitative trading background. Whether the paper wealth can be converted into cash depends on whether DeepSeek can successfully go public in its next step.