JAKARTA – Liang Wenfeng, the Founder of the startup DeepSeek, has gained public attention after launching his latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) model platform, R1, which is being positioned as a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

This breakthrough led to a sharp decline in the stock prices of major US technology companies, including Nvidia, which fell by as much as 17% on Monday (27/1). The significant drop caused Nvidia to lose USD 589 billion in market capitalisation in a single day, marking the largest one-day loss in history.

According to data compiled by IDNFinancials, Liang Wenfeng is known as a low-profile figure. On January 20, 2025, the 39-year-old appeared at a closed symposium hosted by Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, alongside several conglomerates from various industries.

Liang Wenfeng’s emergence responds to a challenge posed by Robin Li, the CEO of Baidu, who had also been invited to a closed symposium with PM Li Qiang in 2023. At that time, Robin Li stated that China no longer needed to replicate AI models developed by OpenAI, but should instead focus on applying existing AI models for commercial purposes.

In a July interview with the Chinese local media outlet Weaves, Liang Wenfeng acknowledged that China's AI development could not remain a follower forever.

"We often say that there is a 1–2-year gap between AI developed in China and the US, but the real gap is the difference between originality and imitation," said Liang Wenfeng.

On the same occasion, Liang Wenfeng also criticised China’s technology industry for focusing too heavily on profit over the past 30 years, resulting in fewer innovations being produced.

Currently, DeepSeek has decided to release the source code of its AI model, in contrast to OpenAI, which has kept the source code of its AI model closed. (KR/ZH)