Chinese AI startup DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is reportedly set to meet with China’s top politicians, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during a summit that Alibaba founder Jack Ma is also expected to attend.
The summit, which could happen as soon as next week, may be intended as a signal by China’s Communist Party that it aims to adopt a more supportive stance toward domestic private-sector firms, according to Bloomberg. In 2020, Chinese authorities effectively prevented Alibaba from executing what would have been the biggest public offering in history.
Liang, who founded DeepSeek in 2023 as a subsidiary of his quantitative hedge fund, High-Flyer, rose to prominence last month after DeepSeek’s openly available AI models showed strong performance against leading models from OpenAI and other American AI companies. U.S. officials have raised concerns over the explosive popularity of DeepSeek’s models and services, which they perceive as a threat to the U.S.’ pole position in the AI race.