ASCENT
Podcast Description
ASCENT dives into the journeys of fastest growing companies. Each episode breaks down their strategies, struggles, and secrets to success. Whether you're an investor, founder, or just curious — this is your backstage pass to the world’s business revolution.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast centers on themes including entrepreneurial success, market innovation, and competitive dynamics, exemplified by episodes like the detailed exploration of Insta360’s rise with a focus on its unique technology and market strategies, alongside discussions of industry challenges and future trends.
ASCENT dives into the journeys of fastest growing companies. Each episode breaks down their strategies, struggles, and secrets to success. Whether you’re an investor, founder, or just curious — this is your backstage pass to the world’s business revolution.
What if I told you one of the most exciting new players in the competitive field of large language model wasn’t founded by a Stanford or MIT AI PhD straight out of a top lab, but by a quant trader?
Was this quant trader (LIANG Wenfeng, LWF) “the man who solved the Chinese market”? To what extent was his quant trading business develop within China?
Why did LWF pivot from quant trading to LLM development?
And the most mysterious of all, how was LWF (the founder of DeepSeek) able to compete among giants in and out of China, while all the other LLM giants are much better equipped than him?
In this episode of Ascent, we’re diving into DeepSeek, but not just any AI LLM story, we will be going through the founder’s journey, how he embarked on his first half of the career as a quant trader and creating a quant trading firm, and how did that quant trading firm later transitioned into an LLM company, which led to product we all know today – DeepSeek. Join us as we unpack this fascinating transition.
Tune in to DeepSeek’s story!
00:00 Intro
04:23 Liang Wenfeng’s early life and education
08:16 Inception of the quant trading journey
18:47 Becoming quant king: building a billion-bollar empire
31:00 The hoarding (of GPUs) begins
39:53 Liang Wenfeng’s vision for China’s quant future
46:48 The 2021 challenge and fund drawdown
50:29 The pivot: from trading to AGI
57:17 Innovation under constraint
01:08:31 DeepSeek’s unconventional hiring philosophy
01:12:35 Future uncertain: can DeepSeek outlast the giants?
01:20:50 Ascent with open source
Correction: 59:24 – it should be 600 billion not 6 billion parameters
(And guess who generated the show notes this time … DeepSeek!)
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