DeepSeek Founder's Gaokao Report Shows He Chose Zhejiang Over Tsinghua

A recently surfaced newspaper clipping from 2002 reveals that Liang Wenfeng, founder of AI startup DeepSeek and quantitative trading firm High-Flyer, scored an impressive 806 on China's gaokao (college entrance exam) — enough to get into Tsinghua University. But he didn't go.

Instead, Liang chose Zhejiang University's electronic information engineering program as his first choice, according to the report. At the time, Zhejiang was ranked third nationally overall, and the major was his dream field.

Liang grew up in a family of teachers and attended Wu Chuan No.1 High School. The newspaper report, titled "Gaokao Top Scorer," details how he excelled in science subjects, rising from the top 100 in his grade to the top 10 by the end of his freshman year, and maintaining a top-3 spot through his senior year. He started learning computers in middle school and often volunteered to fix the school's computer equipment.