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Coco Feng

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is an “extremely self-disciplined person” who does not take short cuts, according to Li Auto chief executive Li Xiang, as he sheds more light on the entrepreneur behind China’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) start-up.
Li, who is also the founder and chairman of the Beijing-based electric vehicle manufacturer, acknowledged how a single meeting last September with Liang enlightened him about DeepSeek’s “best practices” and the importance of “fighting against some of the laziness of human nature, like taking short cuts”, according to a video posted on Wednesday by the firm on various social media.
“Anytime we want to go about changing and improving capabilities, the first step must be to do research,” Li said. “The second step is development. The third is to articulate the capability, while the fourth is to turn that capability into business value.”
He also gave credit to Liang’s open-source approach on AI development, which serves DeepSeek well and provides a guidepost for Li Auto’s ambitions of expanding into AI and producing humanoid robots.
That assessment reflects Liang’s efforts in leading DeepSeek’s ascent as a true innovator in AI, overshadowing larger technology companies and a bevy of start-ups in the fast-developing industry.
DeepSeek generated worldwide attention in late December 2024 and January by consecutively releasing two advanced open-source AI models, V3 and R1, which were built at a fraction of the cost and computing power that major tech companies typically require for developing large language models (LLMs) – the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.
The open-source approach gives public access to a program’s source code, allowing third-party software developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Open-source technologies have been a huge contributor to China’s tech industry over the past few decades.

Months after meeting Liang, Li said his company decided to “stand on the shoulders of giants” by adopting DeepSeek’s AI models to accelerate the development of its own vision-language-action model – a system that integrates visual perception, natural language understanding and execution of physical action.
Li Auto made that move “purely out of gratitude to DeepSeek”, Li said. The electric carmaker had also open-sourced its in-house automotive operating system, Halo OS.
Liang predicted last year that other AI model developers would eventually surpass ChatGPT creator OpenAI, even if the US firm kept its products closed-source.
“There are at least 18 teams in China with about the same level [of intelligence] as those at DeepSeek,” Wu Zhiqiang, an urban and rural planning expert, was quoted as saying in a Shanghai Securities News report.
“It’s just that DeepSeek stood out first,” Wu said at the Digital China Summit held last month in Fuzhou, capital of southeastern Fujian province.
Among Chinese tech entrepreneurs, Liang has kept a low profile, eschewing a public social media presence. The only evidence of his direct involvement in DeepSeek is his name appearing in research papers published by the start-up.
Still, that has not prevented more well-known tech executives from commenting on Liang and DeepSeek.
Tencent Holdings chairman and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng said in March that he had spoken with Liang and “admires” how DeepSeek made “truly open-source and free products”. Ma and Liang sat next to each other in the front row of a high-profile symposium with top entrepreneurs hosted by President Xi Jinping in February.
Shenzhen-based Tencent was among the first Chinese tech companies to integrate DeepSeek technology into its own LLMs. In response, DeepSeek recently acknowledged the significant role that a technical solution from Tencent played in addressing a persistent issue in its system.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post in March, start-up 01.AI founder and chief executive Lee Kai-fu said that his company ceased its own AI development and was leveraging DeepSeek’s popularity to sell AI solutions to corporate clients, particularly in the finance, video gaming and legal sectors.


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DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng ‘takes no short cuts’, Li Auto CEO says

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, in the background, follows an open-source approach in AI development. Photo: Shutterstock


Li Xiang, the founder, chairman and chief executive of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Li Auto. Photo: Sohu

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DeepSeek says it has used an open-source technical solution from Tencent to improve its AI system. Photo: Shutterstock

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Illustration: Henry Wong

A stall at Mililing village selling zhuangyuan sugar cane juice. Photo: Coco Feng

The class of 1999 at the junior division of Wuchuan No 1 Middle School. Liang Wenfeng is in the top row, sixth from the right. Photo: Coco Feng

Flowers bloom at the campus of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Photo: Xinhua

Visitors take photos outside the house of Liang Wenfeng’s grandparents. Photo: Coco Feng

Liang Wenfeng shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a symposium in February. Photo: CCTV

A street sign reads, “I seek deeply in Mililing”, a play on the AI start-up’s name. Photo: Coco Feng

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That assessment reflects how Liang, an ‘extremely self-disciplined person’, led DeepSeek to become a true innovator in AI


That assessment reflects how Liang, an ‘extremely self-disciplined person’, led DeepSeek to become a true innovator in AI.


DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng ‘takes no short cuts’, Li Auto CEO says

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}That assessment reflects how Liang, an ‘extremely self-disciplined person’, led DeepSeek to become a true innovator in AI

That assessment reflects how Liang, an ‘extremely self-disciplined person’, led DeepSeek to become a true innovator in AI