In China’s Silicon Valley, the place founding father of DeepSeek Liang Wenfeng retains a low profile

Town of Hangzhou in southern China is likely one of the nation’s main expertise hubs, and residential to the groundbreaking synthetic intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek.

Consider Hangzhou as a Chinese language model of Silicon Valley.

The headquarters of DeepSeek is on the twelfth ground of a contemporary workplace constructing.

Safety guard Mr Ma says for the final two weeks the foyer has been full of folks hoping to get a glimpse of the elusive founding father of DeepSeek, Liang Wenfeng.

Chinese language vloggers, tech jobseekers, journalists and members of the general public have dropped in to try to go to the corporate, however it’s preserving a low profile.

We have been instructed by safety that Liang Wenfeng hasn’t been within the workplace for the previous couple of days.

He has gone to floor since DeepSeek hit the headlines.

The corporate shocked the world when it launched its newest AI mannequin and introduced it had constructed it for lower than $6m and with out utilizing the world’s most superior semiconductor chips.

If that is true, it has upended the prevailing view that China was nicely behind within the AI race.

DeepSeek seems to have made great strides in AI and the Chinese language authorities can be paying consideration.

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What’s DeepSeek?
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Liang Wenfeng met China’s premier Li Qiang on the day the AI app was launched, 20 January.

DeepSeek is strictly the kind of revolutionary firm and tradition China has been pushing for below a coverage it calls “new productive forces.”

Most of China’s upstart tech firms are closely subsidised by native governments.

Nonetheless, DeepSeek is funded by Mr Liang’s hedge fund firm Excessive Flyer.

Hangzhou is dwelling to dozens of high-tech firms, essentially the most well-known are known as the “six little dragons”.

Considered one of these is Deep Robotics. It develops robotic canine and is the primary Chinese language firm to deploy its canines abroad (to Singapore) for industrial use.

Deep Robotics model supervisor Vera Huang instructed Sky Information: “Hangzhou locations nice emphasis on the cultivation of technological expertise, with wonderful establishments like Zhejiang College.”

Ms Huang says the federal government helps companies develop, and in the event that they obtain so-called “Little Large” standing they’re eligible for state funding.

The US is alarmed at China’s AI progress and prowess. It has tried to stymie its improvement by putting export controls on essentially the most superior semi-conductor chips.

However DeepSeek has discovered a workaround and says it constructed its mannequin with legacy chips.

US President Donald Trump mentioned DeepSeek’s improvement was a “wake-up name”.

Nicely the world has woken up. What’s unclear is the way it will reply.