Quick overview

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DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, achieved returns of over 50% last year despite spending far less than competitors, boosting the company’s potential war chest. DeepSeek has already shaken up the global tech scene.

Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management, which manages over 70 billion yuan ($10 billion), reported an average return of 56.6 percent across its funds in 2025. PaiPaiWang noted this made it the second-best performer among Chinese quant funds managing over 10 billion yuan. Only Ningbo Lingjun Investment Management Partnership, which led the nation’s top quants with gains of more than 70%, outperformed it.

Li stated that, assuming a 1 percent management fee and a 20 percent performance fee, the fund’s explosive growth last year could have generated over $700 million.

That is orders of magnitude more than the reported budget of less than $6 million DeepSeek needed to develop its groundbreaking AI model, while some competitors have questioned those cost claims.

PaiPaiWang reported that two products managed by Xu Jin, a co-founder of High-Flyer, increased by an average of 58.6%.

Simon Lu, the CEO, oversaw eight products with an average return of 56%. Lu also ranked last. With a Sharpe ratio of 2.8 percent as of December, it was one of the top quant funds based on risk-adjusted returns for stock strategies last year.

, High-Flyer’s main product line now consists of those funds after abandoning market-neutral strategies in 2024 to go “all-in” on long-only strategies, all aiming to outperform their underlying stock indexes. The gains exemplify China’s quant funds’ stellar year, with an average return of 30.5 percent last year.