What if I told you one of the most exciting new players in the competitive field of large language model wasn't founded by a Stanford or MIT AI PhD straight out of a top lab, but by a quant trader?

Was this quant trader (LIANG Wenfeng, LWF) “the man who solved the Chinese market”? To what extent was his quant trading business develop within China?

Why did LWF pivot from quant trading to LLM development?

And the most mysterious of all, how was LWF (the founder of DeepSeek) able to compete among giants in and out of China, while all the other LLM giants are much better equipped than him?

In this episode of Ascent, we're diving into DeepSeek, but not just any AI LLM story, we will be going through the founder’s journey, how he embarked on his first half of the career as a quant trader and creating a quant trading firm, and how did that quant trading firm later transitioned into an LLM company, which led to product we all know today - DeepSeek. Join us as we unpack this fascinating transition.

Tune in to DeepSeek’s story!

00:00 Intro

04:23 Liang Wenfeng's early life and education

08:16 Inception of the quant trading journey

18:47 Becoming quant king: building a billion-bollar empire

31:00 The hoarding (of GPUs) begins

39:53 Liang Wenfeng's vision for China's quant future

46:48 The 2021 challenge and fund drawdown

50:29 The pivot: from trading to AGI

57:17 Innovation under constraint

01:08:31 DeepSeek's unconventional hiring philosophy

01:12:35 Future uncertain: can DeepSeek outlast the giants?

01:20:50 Ascent with open source

Correction: 59:24 - it should be 600 billion not 6 billion parameters

(And guess who generated the show notes this time ... DeepSeek!)

Welcome to Season 1 of the ASCENT podcast!

What if I told you a new titan is rising in the action camera arena—one poised to dethrone GoPro as the world’s fastest-growing brand?

What if this company isn’t just winning over users with sleek hardware, but dominating through relentless software innovation?

What if its founder—a once-rebellious software engineer—brought the company to a seismic IPO approval only 5 years after its establishment (well, it took another 5 years for that IPO to be approved, but still!)?

And what if that founder, JK Liu, is now among the youngest CEOs to lead a publicly listed tech disruptor?

Meet Insta360: the 360-camera leader commanding the largest market share (No.1 in 360 degree photography), now storming the sports/action scene with ambitions to redefine the industry. More than a camera company, Insta360 has forged an entirely new creative frontier. Its technology liberates creators: shoot first, frame later. Imagine capturing life’s chaos without fixating on angles—Insta360 lets you re-center the story in post-production, turning raw footage into cinematic gold.

Behind this revolution is JK Liu—a visionary software engineer.

He's a genius? Fusing world-class product design with viral storytelling and strategic partnerships. Insta360 evolves at warp speed, blending cutting-edge tech with an almost cult-like community.

The result? A brand not just following trends, but scripting the future of content creation.

Tune in to Insta360’s story!

00:00 Intro

02:50 The journey of JK Liu

05:57 Early ventures of JK

09:02 The birth of Insta360

11:58 Identifying opportunities in the market

14:54 Product development: from Nano to Insta360 One

18:06 The evolution of Insta360: key products and innovations

39:51 GoPro vs. Insta360: a tale of two strategies

44:03 The importance of focusing on the global market

49:49 Strategic partnerships is the key to Insta360's success

56:11 Innovative marketing and brand ambassadors

01:01:48 Navigating IPO challenges

01:05:05 Our reviews of the key success factors