Liang Wenfeng became the richest person in AI. 36 people are on the list of billionaires, 9 of whom are post-00s
Source/Smart Stuff
Author/Cheng Qian
Original title/Just now! Liang Wenfeng became the richest person with AI, and 36 people relied on big models to become billionaires
On July 14, according to the latest data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index,DeepSeek's founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng's net asset value has reached 36 billion US dollars (approximately RMB 244 billion).Surpass OpenAI's co-founder and president Greg Brockman to become one of the richest big model founders in the world.
Liang Wenfeng's net worth (Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index)
In his early years, Liang Wenfeng relied on Magic Square to become a billionaire, and this wave of big models has further boosted his value. At the beginning of June this year, it was reported in the market that DeepSeek would complete a round of financing of about 50 billion yuan, causing Liang Wenfeng's worth to soar 115.57% from US$16.7 billion (approximately RMB 113.2 billion) to US$36 billion.
According to incomplete statistics from Wisdom & West, as of the 14th, the big model had listed at least 36 billionaires with net assets exceeding 1 billion US dollars. The net assets of these entrepreneurs ranged from 1.3 billion US dollars to 25.5 billion US dollars, and their cumulative assets exceeded 249.1 billion US dollars (about 1.69 trillion yuan). This article only focuses on big model circuit entrepreneurs, and does not include pan-Internet and large technology group entrepreneurs.
These billionaires are from 17 companies around the world, coveringBig models, AI computing power, data services, AI programming, AI medical care, AI agents, AI searchWait for the racetrack.
Among them, 6 Chinese are on the list, 3 are from the Chinese company Zhi Spectrum and MiniMax, respectively, Liu Debing, Chairman of Smart Spectrum, and Tang Jie, founder and CEO of MiniMax, Yan Junjie, founder, CEO, chairman of the board of directors and chief technology officer of MiniMax; the other 3 Chinese are Alexandr Wang (Alexandr Wang), the former co-founder and CEO of the US AI data service platform Scale AI and current Chief AI Officer of Meta, and Edwin Chen (Lucy Guo), founder and CEO of Surge AI (Edwin Chen) Edwin Chen) Steven Hao, co-founder and CEO of Cognition, an American AI programming unicorn.
Furthermore,Among the billionaires associated with the big model, there are 9 post-00s. Among them, Wang Taoyi is the most valuable, with a net asset value of 3.2 billion US dollars (approximately RMB 21.7 billion).
In addition to Liang Wenfeng's soaring net asset value, US AI data platform Databricks CEO Ion Stoicah and CTO Matei Zaharia's net worth also rose to 5 billion US dollars (approximately RMB 33.9 billion) along with the big model boom.
Global billionaires on the rise of big models (statistics as of July 14) (Smart Watch & West)
1｜Chinese companies have created 3 billionaires, Liu Debing is the most valuable
In the Forbes global real-time billionaires list, there are 3 Chinese entrepreneurs on the list, from Smart Spectrum and MiniMax, respectively. Liu Debing, chairman of Smart Spectrum, is second only to Brockman with a net worth of 24.1 billion US dollars.
1. The intellectual spectrum Liu Debing and Tang Jie, US$24.1 billion, US$5.2 billion
The two billionaires from Smart Spectrum are Chairman Liu Debing and Founder and Chief Scientist Tang Jie. Their net assets reached US$24.1 billion (approximately RMB 163.4 billion) and US$5.2 billion (approximately RMB 35.3 billion), respectively.
Zhipu Chairman Liu Debing
Zhi Spectrum was founded in June 2019 and was transformed from the technical achievements of the Tsinghua University Computer Department Knowledge Engineering Laboratory. Tang Jie, professor of computer science at Tsinghua University, is the founder and soul figure of Zhi Spectrum. According to the prospectus, Tang Jie directly holds 6.66% of the shares and Liu Debing directly holds 0.23% of the shares.
Tang Jie, professor of computer science at Tsinghua University, and Tang Jie, founder and chief scientist of Smart Spectrum (Source: “AGI-next” summit)
In January of this year, Smart Spectrum was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the “first big model share” for Hong Kong stocks. Today, its market value in Hong Kong stocks has reached HK$744.997 billion (approximately RMB 644.5 billion). It is worth mentioning that in June of this year, Zhipu's total market capitalization surpassed HK$1 trillion (approximately RMB 865 billion) for the first time, rising more than 2000% during the year.
2. MiniMax Yan Junjie, US$2.1 billion
MiniMax was founded in early 2022, and the net asset value of its founder, chairman, executive director, CEO and CTO Yan Junjie reached US$2.1 billion (approximately RMB 14.2 billion).
MiniMax is the second major model company to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after Smart Spectrum. According to MiniMax's latest financing announcement in July 2026, Yan Junjie's shareholding ratio will drop from 25.22% to 22.65% after the share placement is completed.
Yan Junjie, Founder, Chairman, Executive Director, CEO and CTO of MiniMax
On January 9, MiniMax was officially listed. From its establishment in January 2022 to listing, MiniMax took about 4 years to become the fastest AI company in the world from establishment to IPO. Today, its market value has reached HK$72.136 billion (approximately RMB 62.4 billion).
2｜Anthropic has selected 7 billionaires, all worth 100 billion yuan
The top global models with the third highest net asset value and the most billionaires: OpenAI and Anthropic.
1. OpenAI Brockman, $25.5 billion
OpenAI on the OpenAI list: Co-founder and CEO Greg Brockman's net assets reached US$25.5 billion (approximately RMB 172.9 billion). In May of this year, Greg Brockman testified in court during the Century trial between Musk and OpenAI, admitting that his personal OpenAI shares are currently worth close to US$30 billion (approximately RMB 203.4 billion), and that he himself has not invested in OpenAI.
Greg Brockman, Co-Founder and President of OpenAI (Source: X)
In March of this year, OpenAI announced that it had completed the latest round of financing of US$122 billion (approximately RMB 827.1 billion). Investors include Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, and the post-investment valuation reached US$852 billion (approximately RMB 5.78 trillion). On June 9, OpenAI secretly submitted draft IPO documents to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman is not on the list, or because he actively chose not to hold any direct shares in OpenAI. Most of the assets are decentralized private equity investments and lack confirmation documents, so he is not included in the real-time list.
2. 7 co-founders of Anthropic, $15.5 billion
In 2021, Dario Amodei, then former vice president of research at OpenAI, left with a 10-person R&D team including his sister Daniela Amodei (Daniela Amodei) to set up Anthropic.
Dario Amodei on the left, Daniela Amodei on the right (Source: Time Magazine)
Today, Anthropic has become OpenAI's strongest competitor, and OpenAI first completed a secret IPO application on June 1.
At the end of May this year, a round of financing of 65 billion US dollars (about 440.7 billion yuan) not only overtook OpenAI's valuation to reach 965 billion US dollars (about 654 million yuan), but also enabled Anthropic's seven co-creators to become billionaires overnight. Today, their net assets have all reached 15.5 billion US dollars (approximately RMB 105.1 billion).
3 | 9 post-00s billionaires were born, with a maximum value of 21.7 billion yuan
Under the global wave of big model entrepreneurship, another group of post-00s entrepreneurs quickly rose to the ranks of billionaires.
1. 2 post-00s founders of Scale AI, $3.2 billion, $1.5 billion
The birth of two other post-00s billionaires is closely related to Meta's acquisition of the US AI data labeling startup Scale AI.
In June 2025, Meta acquired 49% of Scale AI's shares at a price of over US$14 billion (approximately RMB 98.11 billion) and took away Alexandr Wang (Alexandr Wang), the co-founder and CEO of the startup. The deal then boosted Scale AI's valuation to US$29 billion (approximately RMB 203.23 billion).
Wang Tao, head of Meta Super Smart Lab
Today, Wang Tao is the head of Meta's Super Intelligent Laboratory, with net assets of US$3.2 billion (approximately RMB 21.7 billion).
Furthermore, Lucy Guo (Lucy Guo), the co-founder of Scale AI, became one of the youngest self-made wealthy women in the world at the time, with a net worth of 1.5 billion US dollars (approximately RMB 10.2 billion). Guo Luci left the startup in 2018 but kept his shares.
Lucy Guo (Lucy Guo), Co-Founder of Scale AI (Source: Forbes)
Scale AI was founded in 2016. Its core business is to provide enterprises with data tagging services for training AI models.
2. Mercor, 3 post-00s founders, $2.2 billion
Mercor's three post-00s co-founders, Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody, and Surya Midha, are worth US$2.2 billion (approximately RMB 14.9 billion).
From left to right: Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody, Surya Midha
Mercor was founded in 2023. Its main business is AI recruitment and provision of model training data services. Its customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
3. Cursor, 4 post-00s founders, $1.3 billion
In June of this year, SpaceX, a commercial aerospace, communications and AI giant under Musk, announced the acquisition of Cursor, the American star AI programming unicorn. The amount of Cursor acquired by SpaceX this time is 60 billion US dollars (about 405.6 billion yuan) based on Cursor's implied equity value.
Cursor, formerly Anysphere, was co-founded by Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger while attending MIT in 2022. The four post-00s co-founders are now all billionaires, and their net assets have all reached US$1.3 billion (approximately RMB 8.8 billion).
From left to right: Aman Sanger, Arvid Lunnemark, Sualeh Asif, Michael Truell
4 | Open source model+audio synthesis, 5 Lianchuang becomes a billionaire
In addition, there are 2 companies that focus on big models, and all 5 joint ventures have jumped to become billionaires.
1. 3 founders of Mistral AI, $1.8 billion
French AI startup Mistral AI was founded in 2023 by CEO Arthur Mensch, CTO Timothée Lacroix, and chief scientist Guillaume Lample. Manche previously worked at Google DeepMind, and both Lacroix and Rampour are from the Meta AI research team.
From left to right: Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix (Source: Mistral AI)
The three founders now have net assets of US$1.8 billion (approximately RMB 12.2 billion).
In June of this year, Bloomberg reported that Mistral AI is making early negotiations with investors on its new round of financing, with the goal of raising about 3 billion euros (approximately RMB 23.2 billion) of capital for operation with a valuation of about 20 billion euros (approximately RMB 154.4 billion).
2. 2 co-founders of ElevenLabs, $1.8 billion
ElevenLabs was founded in April 2022. Its main business is to develop AI speech synthesis models and software. The founders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski are from Google and Palantir, respectively.
Mati Staniszewski on the left, Piotr Dabkowski on the right (Source: ElevenLabs)
The net assets of the two founders are US$1.8 billion (approximately RMB 12.2 billion). In February of this year, the startup completed financing of 500 million US dollars (about 3.4 billion yuan), with a valuation of 11 billion US dollars (about 74.6 billion yuan).
5｜The post-80s Chinese were worth 122 billion dollars, and a startup invested by Nvidia gave birth to 3 billionaires
Along with the development of big models, the founders of companies related to AI computing power and AI data labeling services have also soared.
1. CEO of Surge AI, $18 billion
Surge AI was founded in 2020 to position high-end data labeling services and is a partner of tech giants such as Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Its founder is Edwin Chen (Edwin Chen), a post-80s Chinese, and its net asset value reached US$18 billion (approximately RMB 122 billion).
Edwin Chen (Source: YouTube)
In September of last year, according to Forbes, Surge AI was in the first round of financing of 1 billion US dollars (about 6.8 billion yuan), and the corresponding valuation rose to about 24 billion US dollars (about 162.7 billion yuan). As early as 2024, the startup's revenue reached 1.2 billion US dollars (about 8.1 billion yuan).
2. CEO of CoreWeave, $5.4 billion
In 2017, CoreWeave was initially founded and mainly engaged in cryptocurrency mining. In 2020, CoreWeave cloud services were transformed and released, and GPU resources were leased to other companies. Nvidia is a key financial supporter, major supplier and major customer of CoreWeave.
Michael Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, is now worth US$5.4 billion (approximately RMB 36.6 billion). CoreWeave successfully landed on NASDAQ in March of last year, and now its market capitalization has reached US$45.451 billion (approximately RMB 308.2 billion).
Michael Intrator (Source: Forbes)
6｜The vertical circuit is in full bloom, and the net asset value of the founder of Palantir exceeds 80 billion dollars
Alexander Karp, co-founder and CEO of American big data analysis and software company Palantir, has a net worth of US$12.5 billion (approximately RMB 84.8 billion).
Alexander Karp (Photo: Axios)
Palantir, founded in 2003, uses big data, AI and other technologies to provide decision support to the government and large enterprises. In May of this year, its 2026 Q1 financial report showed that the company's net profit soared 307% year over year.
This is due to its ability to provide the underlying capability to connect to the enterprise's actual business systems. The company believes that without this infrastructure, even the most powerful big models will end up in the “AI Demo (AI Sample)” stage.
Daniel Nadler, founder and CEO of the American AI medical startup OpenEvidence, has net assets of US$7.6 billion (approximately RMB 51.5 billion).
Daniel Nadler (Photo: Forbes)
The company was founded in 2022 and is known as the “Doctor's version of ChatGPT,” and its main business is to help doctors quickly find and check medical evidence. In January of this year, OpenEvidence completed a new round of financing of US$250 million (approximately RMB 1.7 billion) with a valuation of US$12 billion (approximately RMB 81.4 billion).
Sierra, an American AI startup, was established in 2023. Its core business is to replace traditional customer service with AI agents. In December 2025, the company's annual revenue reached US$100 million (approximately RMB 680 million).
Bret Taylor, chairman of the board of directors of OpenAI and co-founder and CEO of Sierra, and Clay Bavor, a former Google executive, Sierra co-founder and CTO, reached a net worth of US$2.5 billion (approximately RMB 17 billion).
Bret Taylor on the left, Clay Bavor on the right
The American AI search unicorn Perplexity was founded in 2022. The founders include Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, all of which have net assets of US$2.1 billion (approximately RMB 14.2 billion).
In an interview with foreign media CNBC in June of this year, Srinivas mentioned that they plan to go public around 2028. In September of last year, The Information quoted people familiar with the matter as reporting that Perplexity completed a new round of financing of 200 million US dollars (about 1.36 billion yuan), with a valuation of 20 billion US dollars (about 135.6 billion yuan).
From left to right: Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho (Source: Perplexity)
Cognition, an American AI programming unicorn, was founded in 2023 by Chinese engineers Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan. The founders were all International Informatics Olympiad (IOI) gold medalists.
Currently, Cognition co-founder and CEO Steven Hao's net worth has reached US$1.3 billion (approximately RMB 8.8 billion).
7 | Conclusion: Big models make wealth faster than ever before, Chinese founders join the first tier
In the past, the world's AI wealth was concentrated in the US for a long time, but now the founders of DeepSeek, Smart Spectrum, and MiniMax are on the list, and their net asset value has even surpassed the top US model startup companies. This proves that the founders of the big model in China have reached the top of the world's wealth.
Furthermore, the companies on the list this time cover segments such as computing power, AI search, AI programming, AI healthcare, intelligence, and data services, which also proves that AI enrichment is no longer limited to the general model, and that wealth dividends radiate outward from the underlying model.
Today, the capital of the big model racetrack is being realized at an unprecedented rate. In the future, as the test of commercialization and implementation approaches, some racetrack valuations will clearly diverge, and the wealth list may usher in a new round of reshuffle.
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