Liang Wenfeng breaks into China's top 10 richest list for the first time, with a net worth of $280 billion, surpassing Ding Lei in valuation.

Beating AI News, October 27 — The Hurun Research Institute released the "2026 Hurun China Rich List." Liang Wenfeng, 41-year-old founder of DeepSeek, made his debut on the list, ranking seventh in China with an estimated fortune of RMB 280 billion, surpassing NetEase's Ding Lei and the Li Ka-shing family to become the wealthiest new entrant this year.

Liang Wenfeng was not on the list last year. Hurun explained that this was mainly because he had previously proposed "not commercializing." However, DeepSeek began large-scale fundraising this year, completing its first round in June, and its pre-money valuation in the second round in August had reached approximately RMB 500 billion. In October, DeepSeek completed RMB 106 billion in fundraising, with a post-money valuation exceeding RMB 600 billion. Nevertheless, the Hurun list uses September 1 as the cutoff date for wealth calculation, and the RMB 280 billion figure is only an estimated personal fortune.

AI is also rewriting the entire rich list. ByteDance's Zhang Yiming saw his wealth grow by RMB 200 billion, returning to China's richest person with RMB 670 billion; Cambricon's Chen Tianshi entered the top ten with RMB 205 billion. Zhipu's Liu Debing and Tang Jie made their debut on the list with RMB 39.5 billion and RMB 27.5 billion, respectively. According to Hurun statistics, more than 160 listed entrepreneurs this year derived their wealth from the AI sector, accounting for about one-tenth of the total.