Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, saw his net worth increase from about 16.7 billion USD to 36 billion USD (approximately 244 billion CNY) after the company's latest round of financing, making him the world's richest person in the AI field, surpassing Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, and Greg Brockman, co-founder and president of OpenAI.
In June 2026, DeepSeek completed a 7.4 billion USD (approximately 50 billion CNY) financing round, increasing the company's valuation to 50 billion USD (approximately 330 billion CNY), setting a new record for financing in AI model companies. In this round of financing, Liang Wenfeng personally invested 20 billion CNY, Tencent invested 10 billion CNY, CATL invested 5 billion CNY, and JD.com, NetEase, and IDG Capital each invested 3 billion CNY.
It is reported that the financing used a special structure, with external funds entering a limited partnership managed by Liang Wenfeng rather than directly investing in DeepSeek's main company, to protect his control. After dilution, Liang Wenfeng still holds approximately 78% of the shares and maintains the company's dominant position.
DeepSeek's valuation rapidly increased from around 10 billion USD in April to 50 billion USD, reflecting the high level of attention from the capital market on AI foundational model companies. Bloomberg's current statistics only cover companies whose core businesses come from AI models and do not include comprehensive technology groups like Alibaba and Tencent.
