"The 'Study Geniuses' in Their 30s and 40s Reshape the Industry... China's 'Four Kings' Lead a Multi-Billion Dollar AI Boom"

Sing Tao Daily: 30- and 40-Something Founders Take Divergent Paths

Moonshot's Yang Zirlin: $16.3 Billion in Assets

DeepSeek's Liang Yuanpeng: $56.2 Billion

Academics Tang Jie and Yan Junjie Focus on AGI Infrastructure

The new model “Kimi K3” developed by Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI has sent shockwaves through Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the United States, drawing attention to the “Four Kings,” the leaders of China's AI industry.

Yang Zelin, founder of Moonshot AI. Reuters Yonhap News

On July 22, Yonhap News, citing Hong Kong-based Sing Tao Daily, reported that the so-called “four large language model (LLM) founders”—Liang Wenfeng (41) of DeepSeek, Yang Zelrin (34) of Moonshot AI, Tang Jie (49) of Zhipu (Z.ai), and Yan Junjie (37) of Minimax—are attracting the interest of the market. These entrepreneurs, in their 30s and 40s, are being called “study geniuses.” Even though they are following very different technological and business paths, they are all achieving results in the global AI market.

Overseas-Educated Yang Zelrin, Homegrown Liang Wenfeng...“Researcher-Type” Founders Shine

On the 18th (local time), the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) was held in Shanghai, China. Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

Among them, the youngest, Yang Zelrin, founder of Moonshot AI, has recently made headlines for introducing Kimi K3, one of the world’s largest open-weight (open-weighted) models with 2.8 trillion parameters. Kimi K3 incorporates a sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture, selectively activating only 16 out of 896 expert neural networks, and can process up to 1 million tokens at once. In a blind developer assessment in Arena’s front-end coding category, this model scored 1,679 points, outpacing Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 (1,631 points) to claim first place.

Yang Zelrin, who topped the science stream in the national college entrance exam in Shantou, Guangdong Province, graduated from Tsinghua University with a degree in computer science before moving to the United States to earn a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He reportedly made such a mark in the U.S. AI industry that Apple showed interest in recruiting him. However, in 2023, he chose to return to China and started his own business. Sing Tao Daily estimates that the value of Moonshot AI has reached $31.5 billion (about KRW 46.6 trillion), with Yang holding a 51.83% stake. Accordingly, his personal net worth is estimated at $16.3 billion (about KRW 24.1 trillion).

In contrast, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is a genuinely “homegrown” talent with no experience studying abroad. Hailing from Wuchuan, Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province, he ranked top in the local college entrance exam before entering Zhejiang University, majoring in electronic information engineering.

As a master's student, Liang applied AI technology to quantitative investment and in 2015 founded a quant hedge fund before launching DeepSeek. The company, under his leadership, has been credited with shaking up the AI industry—long regarded as dominated by the capital-rich U.S. tech giants—by introducing an open-source model with a focus on “cost performance” last January.

During its first round of external funding completed last month, DeepSeek was valued at between 350 billion and 400 billion yuan (about KRW 76.6 trillion to KRW 87.6 trillion), raising around 51 billion yuan (about KRW 11.1 trillion). According to Bloomberg, Liang Wenfeng’s personal assets are worth 256.7 billion yuan (about KRW 56.2 trillion), placing him as the 60th richest person in the world.

Tang Jie, the Professor-Founder, and Yan Junjie, Academia Veteran: “No Monetization Until AGI”

People passing by the Minimax booth at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). Photo by Reuters and Yonhap News Agency

Tang Jie, a professor at Tsinghua University, is co-founder and chief scientist at Zhipu, overseeing technology development. After earning his doctorate in computer science and technology from Tsinghua in 2006, he turned down high-paying corporate offers to remain on the university faculty, later co-founding Zhipu in 2019. In a recent internal email, Tang stated he would focus on foundational artificial general intelligence (AGI) infrastructure research for the next two years, saying he would not pursue short-term applications or monetization, and added, “the great wave has already arrived.”

Zhipu has reportedly completed and partially launched a massive data center built entirely with Chinese semiconductors. According to Bloomberg on July 20 (local time), citing sources, Zhipu finished construction and began partial operation of a 1-gigawatt (GW) data center designed to support its advanced GLM series LLMs.

This month, Zhipu achieved its annual revenue target ahead of schedule, putting the company on track to reach annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $1 billion (about KRW 1.48 trillion). As of the previous day's closing price, Zhipu’s market capitalization stood at 489.8 billion yuan (about KRW 107 trillion).

Meanwhile, Yan Junjie, founder of Minimax, entered the School of Mathematics at Southeast University in 2006, later completing master’s and doctoral studies at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at Tsinghua University. Minimax, which went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January, currently has a market capitalization of 67 billion yuan (about KRW 14.6 trillion), with Yan Junjie’s equity valued at 14.4 billion yuan (about KRW 3.1 trillion). Yan recently announced in an internal email that he will not receive any compensation from the company until its AGI goal is achieved.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.