Who Is Liang Wenfeng, the Founder of A.I. Start-Up DeepSeek?

In technology, many entrepreneurs get only one defining act. Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is already on his second.

The engineer, described by colleagues as introspective, first made his mark in China’s investment world in the late 2010s, cofounding a hedge fund that used artificial-intelligence models to deliver strong returns and attracted billions of dollars in capital.

Buoyed by profits and wary of Beijing’s tightening grip on speculative trading, Mr. Liang pivoted in 2023….