How DeepSeek founder's quant empire is taking on China's choppy IPO boom

Liang Wenfeng, founder of startup DeepSeek, delivers the keynote speech during the 10th China Private Equity Golden Bull Awards on August 30, 2019 in Shanghai, China.Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty ImagesDeepSeek, the lab that put Chinese artificial intelligence on the map last January, has long been financed by High-Flyer Quant, its founder Liang Wenfeng's hedge fund.The fund used AI and deep learning to trade stocks for years before supplying DeepSeek with early funding and computing power.Now, DeepSeek has turned to outside investors to fund its growing ambitions, while High-Flyer has secured allocations across some of China's hottest hard-tech IPOs, from chips to robotics.Pre-IPO placements – shares secured before trading begins – can deliver outsized paper gains for hedge funds, particularly when sought-after stocks rally on their debuts.But recent volatility in AI and chip stocks exposed funds like High-Flyer to sharp drawdowns. As DeepSeek's capital and compute needs grow, it may be unable to rely on High-Flyer, whose revenue has become "unstable," said Rhodium Group research analyst Ciel Qi.Beijing's push for strategically important tech firms to list at home has created "...