Liang Wenfeng, the reclusive founder of DeepSeek, is now the richest person among the world’s AI model builders, with a net worth of $36 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, more than double the $16.7 billion he was worth just weeks ago. The jump traces back to DeepSeek’s first-ever external fundraising round, which closed in June at more than $7.4 billion, pushing DeepSeek’s valuation to roughly $50 billion. Bloomberg updated its calculation on July 13, resulting in a $19 billion overnight gain for Liang. Liang is calculated to own at least 78% of DeepSeek, down from 84% after the round diluted his stake, and he put in about $3 billion of his own, roughly 40% of the entire round. Investors had to commit capital to a limited partnership Liang controls, agree to a five-year lock-up, and accept zero voting rights, with the only exemption being China’s National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. Dario Amodei’s stake in Anthropic is worth around $8 billion, while Greg Brockman’s OpenAI stake is credited with roughly $25 billion, and Sam Altman holds no direct equity in OpenAI.