Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Scant information exists about Liang Wenfeng, the DeepSeek founder whose launch of a cheaper and more accessible AI technology this week prompted a rout on Wall Street. But Wenfeng is not your average tech geek: he does not play with the Silicon bros.\u00a0He\u2019s not been seen on a yacht with Jeff Bezos. He didn\u2019t mingle with other billionaires at Anant Ambani\u2019s nuptials, nor peacock on Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration stage. He\u2019s unlikely to be pictured in a spacesuit, talking of his dream to visit new frontiers. Google search returns an image of Wenfeng in front of DeepSeek branding, the model of a junior accountant with clipped goatee, glasses and pinstripe suit. The portrait has since been discredited as a stock picture from an image library: in real life, Wenfeng looks less self-assured.\u00a0\u00a0The image most widely circulated places him in a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang late last month. Forty years old, he looks so young as to appear callow, despite his pale grey suit and sweater vest. \u201cWhen we first met him, he was this very nerdy guy with a terrible hairstyle talking about building a 10,000-chip cluster to train his own models. We didn\u2019t take him seriously,\u201d his former colleagues told the FT. A former venture capitalist, he launched High-Flyer in 2015. The quantitative hedge fund was so successful that he managed assets worth more than $8bn. He founded DeepSeek in 2023 with a small team of predominantly Chinese talents, many of whom were picked up on graduation from the prestigious Peking University. He pays employees handsome salaries in order to recruit the best that he can.\u00a0Even Elon Musk, who spent the last six months slobbing around in a badly fitting T-shirt, has adopted a new tailored lookBy these accounts at least, Wenfeng stands in contrast to all that a modern tech bro represents: a \u201chomegrown\u201d talent from Guangdong, China, he\u2019s a \u201ctech idealist\u201d (imagine?) who believes that \u201cgiving back is an honour\u201d and who has created an open-source culture as a means to innovate.\u00a0Wenfeng provides an extraordinary counter-narrative to a script that has become almost vaudeville to those outside the bubble. In recent years the Silicon Valley culture has become so swollen on its success and privilege that its proponents now look like players in a pantomime. Of course it\u2019s not what you look like, but what you do that counts. But looking at Monday\u2019s biggest financial losers from the fallout, you wonder if this strange parade of poseurs needed cutting down to size. Suddenly, Nvidia\u2019s Jensen Huang, whose company endured a $589bn wipeout in market value on Monday, looks a bit foolish in his $9k Tom Ford lizard-effect coat. As does Sam Altman in his child-man sweatshirts. And Larry Ellison, Oracle\u2019s own 80-year-old Peter Pan, with his deep-V sweaters and permatan.\u00a0The cult of personality that has grown around these men, the posturing, the self-branding . . . Could it be that we have reached peak tech bro? Perhaps it is no coincidence that many of the \u201cwinners\u201d on Monday\u00a0\u2014 Warren Buffett and Apple\u2019s Tim Cook among them \u2014 are known for a more conservative deportment, the type of guys who wear a suit and tie. Off with the hoodies and funky medallions. In with the stiff collars and sober suits. Even Elon Musk, who spent the last six months slobbing around in a badly fitting T-shirt, has adopted a new tailored look.\u201cYou are such fucking dopes,\u201d says Logan Roy, the patriarch of Succession, when explaining his frustration with his children and the management of his holding company. \u201cI love you. But you are not serious people.\u201d They are words that have echoed all week as the markets scramble for safety following a period of wild ambition, risk and super-accelerated wealth. Bring back serious people: and not just in finance, in every sphere.\u00a0Of course, I would not be such a dope as to make my stock picks according to who does and does not wear a tie. But at least DeepSeek\u2019s \u201cSputnik moment\u201d returns an air of conservatism and introspection to a landscape so hyped on its own successes it thought itself invincible.\u00a0Already, the bros are pushing back. Thrive Capital\u2019s Josh Kushner has been bad-mouthing the DeepSeek platform: Sam Altman\u2019s fan-boy found time to tweet his reservations while stepping out in Paris during the couture shows with Karlie Kloss, his Dior-clad model wife. Kushner has become a totem of big-risk investments, a maverick investor prepared to invest huge amounts in start-ups in the hope of massive gains. Thrive contributed more than $1bn to the funding round that gave OpenAI a $150bn valuation, so one can probably read his X proclamation as little more than sour grapes.\u00a0Communists versus capitalists, suits versus exotic leathers, open source versus IP: the DeepSeek story disrupts the Silicon mythology. I find it all delightfully entertaining, but then I\u2019ve got no skin in this particular game. Wenfeng has unsettled the trajectory from underneath a brilliantly (and possibly, self-barbered) feathered fringe. His only slightly alpha peccadillo? He likes exploring deep-sea caves.jo.ellison@ft.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Scant information exists about Liang Wenfeng, the DeepSeek founder whose launch of a cheaper and more accessible AI technology this week prompted a rout on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-188893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}