Liang Wenfen Again, Quite Impressive!
又是梁文锋，有点猛啊。
Liang Wenfen Again
The annual Gaokao (National College Entrance Examination) just concluded a few days ago, didn't it?
Coincidentally, these past two days, I've repeatedly come across stories on Xiaolvshu (a social media platform) about a top figure in China's AI circle and his Gaokao experience from back in the day.
That's right, this luminary is none other than Liang Wenfen, the founder of DeepSeek.
Everyone knows how impressive DeepSeek is now.
But few realize that DeepSeek's founder, Liang Wenfen, was already in a league of his own more than twenty years ago, during his Gaokao days.
More than two decades ago, Liang Wenfen achieved an outstanding score of 806 on the Gaokao, becoming the top scorer in his region.
This was widely reported by newspapers and verifiable back then.
When people talk about Liang Wenfen, the first impression is often his low-key nature.
Although DeepSeek has released numerous versions, big and small, there have never been any launch events, nor has there been any market promotion.
Liang Wenfen himself rarely makes public appearances; you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of photos of him online. Consequently, people have always been quite curious about his experiences.
Therefore, in this article, we will systematically review Liang Wenfen's academic and entrepreneurial journey, to see how he gradually reached where he is today, becoming a top entrepreneur in the AI field.
Note: Looking at others' experiences can often provide us with inspiration.
Academic and Entrepreneurial Journey
Public records show that Liang Wenfen was born in 1985 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, into a family of elementary school teachers.
Liang Wenfen, who displayed a talent for learning from an early age, excelled academically, with a particular aptitude for mathematics.
Upon graduating from elementary school, Liang Wenfen gained direct admission to Wuchuan No.1 High School through an academic competition, where he completed his junior and senior high school education.
During junior high, Liang Wenfen's overall academic performance wasn't exceptionally outstanding, as he was somewhat偏科 (strong in some subjects, weak in others), particularly excelling in mathematics and physics.
However, in high school, Liang Wenfen's academic performance saw a qualitative leap. Especially after joining the school's Olympic competition class, his grades improved significantly, consistently ranking among the top three in his entire grade during his senior year.
In 2002, Liang Wenfen was admitted to Zhejiang University's Electronic Information Engineering undergraduate program with an excellent Gaokao score, embarking on his university path.
Just how excellent was his Gaokao score? As mentioned earlier, he became the top scorer in his region with a score of 806.
Although his Gaokao score at the time exceeded the admission threshold for Tsinghua University, he ultimately chose Zhejiang University's Electronic Information Engineering program because, in his view, the corresponding major and direction at Zhejiang University better aligned with his interests.
After graduating with his bachelor's degree, Liang Wenfen continued his studies at Zhejiang University, enrolling as a postgraduate student in Information and Communication Engineering in 2007, beginning his master's journey.
During his postgraduate studies at Zhejiang University, Liang Wenfen studied under Professor Xiang Zhiyu, focusing on computer vision research, and graduated with his master's degree from Zhejiang University in 2010.
During these years of undergraduate and postgraduate study at Zhejiang University, Liang Wenfen developed a strong interest in financial markets. Coupled with his excellent mathematical and scientific background, this laid the groundwork for his subsequent entrepreneurial path.
At the same time, many like-minded friends Liang Wenfen met at Zhejiang University later became important partners in his entrepreneurial journey.
Despite his strong academic background, Liang Wenfen did not choose a traditional career path. Instead, he developed a keen interest in financial markets during university and acutely perceived the immense potential of quantitative investment through mathematics and artificial intelligence.
In 2008, amidst the global financial crisis, Liang Wenfen assembled a team and began exploring the possibilities of fully automated quantitative trading.
In 2013, Liang Wenfen co-founded Hangzhou Jacobi Investment Management Co., Ltd. with his Zhejiang University classmates. This company specializes in investment management and consulting. It is said that the company's name comes from the German mathematician Carl Jacobi, reflecting their love and respect for mathematics.
Two years later, in 2015, Liang Wenfen and his founding team co-founded High-Flyer Quant (幻方量化), focusing on quantitative investment using mathematics and artificial intelligence.
At that time, the founding team was full of ambition, diligent, and determined to become a world-class quantitative hedge fund.
And in that year, Liang Wenfen was just 30 years old.
As is well known, High-Flyer Quant enjoys a very high reputation in the quantitative investment field, having once managed assets exceeding 100 billion yuan, making it a leader in the quantitative market at the time.
High-Flyer Quant has also consistently focused on the development and application of quantitative investment strategies centered on mathematics and artificial intelligence.
2016 was a significant turning point for High-Flyer, as it officially achieved the AI transformation of its quantitative strategies. The first stock position generated by a deep learning algorithm model went live for real-time trading, utilizing GPUs for computation. Over the next few years, the company grew rapidly, and its asset management scale expanded quickly.
By 2021, High-Flyer's asset management scale surpassed the 100 billion yuan mark, placing it among the top quantitative private equity firms in China. At the same time, Liang Wenfen officially became known as the 'low-key quantitative king' in the industry.
In that year, Liang Wenfen was exactly 36 years old.
After achieving immense success in quantitative investment, Liang Wenfen turned his attention to the highly promising field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), once again demonstrating his forward-thinking insight. This led to the story of DeepSeek.
In 2023, Liang Wenfen officially founded DeepSeek, formally entering the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
DeepSeek is an innovative technology company focused on exploring cutting-edge AGI research and its practical applications.
DeepSeek's goal is not merely to develop efficient large language models, but to dedicate itself to exploring the essence of AGI and promoting the progress of the entire ecosystem.
As stated in its corporate culture:
"Devote ourselves to the pursuit of the essence of AGI, avoid mediocrity, embrace curiosity, and answer the biggest questions with the longest-term perspective."
Liang Wenfen once mentioned in an interview that because large language models are an essential path to AGI and already possess preliminary AGI characteristics, DeepSeek chose to start there.
After its founding, DeepSeek, despite its relatively small R&D team, achieved significant breakthroughs in just over a year, successively launching multiple models.
Does everyone still vividly remember the unprecedented sensation when DeepSeek-R1 was released? That was a highlight moment for domestic AI, shocking Silicon Valley at the time.
Because from that moment on, the situation where AI large models were monopolized by a few international giants was completely broken. DeepSeek, through open-source, efficient, and lower-cost technological innovation, truly promoted the affordability and universal accessibility of AI large models.
And this is the greatest significance of DeepSeek's emergence.
Liang Wenfen's 50 Top Insights
Although Liang Wenfen rarely makes public appearances and even fewer interviews, he did participate in an exclusive interview with 'Anyong Waves' when DeepSeek was just launched. I watched the entire content at that time.
It must be said that many of the insights, technical observations, and industry understandings Liang Wenfen shared were very inspiring.
We've shared this content before, and many students might have seen it. Today, let's specifically compile these 50 core insights from Liang Wenfen and share them with everyone again.
You can reflect on them and see if they offer you new inspiration.
On what DeepSeek does
On understanding AI and the industry
On understanding technology and innovation
On understanding hiring and evaluation
On understanding open source
In Conclusion
Today, Liang Wenfen's name resonates throughout the global tech community. Simultaneously, an AI wave sparked by DeepSeek has already spread extensively worldwide.
Over the past two years, the pace of development in the AI field has been evident to all, with technological iteration far exceeding expectations.
Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, AI will truly become an indispensable part of our daily lives, as vital as water, electricity, and gas.
DeepSeek's success has set an excellent example for the industry and is a tremendous encouragement for domestic AI.
The development of China's AI community is becoming increasingly vibrant. We can look forward to more technological and product innovations in the future.
Note: This article has been included in the open-source GitHub repository "Road to Coding" https://github.com/rd2coding/Road2Coding, which contains my compiled self-study routes + knowledge point summaries for 6 major programming directions (roles), interview questions, my resume, several hardcore PDF notes, as well as programmer life and reflections. Welcome to star it.