DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng rejects KPIs, overtime culture as AI lab hits $60 billion valuation

Liang Wenfeng built a $60 billion AI company in three years. He says he did it without making anyone stay late. The DeepSeek founder revealed his management philosophy during a nearly four-hour discussion with staff, transcribed and obtained by Tencent Technology. His core message was simple: no KPIs, no overtime culture, no performance theater. “We generally don’t work overtime,” Liang said during the session. For a company that has racked up roughly 173 million downloads since its public launch in January 2025, that’s a remarkable statement. How DeepSeek got here DeepSeek was founded in July 2023 in Hangzhou. In under two years, it went from obscurity to directly challenging ChatGPT’s dominance in the consumer AI space. Its valuation reportedly climbed from a roughly $10 billion target in April 2026 to somewhere in the $45 to $52 billion range by mid-2026. The company closed or entered advanced stages of a funding round exceeding $7.4 billion. The team reportedly numbered around 160 employees by 2025. For context, OpenAI employs thousands. DeepSeek achieved competitive AI model performance with a fraction of the headcount, leaning heavily on open-source development and dramatical...