DeepSeek founder makes debut on China's 2026 rich list

Liang Wenfeng, the founder of AI startup DeepSeek, made his debut at number seven on China’s 2026 rich list with an estimated fortune of $41.7 billion. His wealth was pumped up by DeepSeek’s industry-shaking R1 reasoning model released last year. DeepSeek is reportedly close to completing a new funding round worth 100 billion yuan, which would value the company at around 500 billion yuan.