Luo Fuli: The 29-year-old researcher behind DeepSeek’s rise

China’s AI sector is gaining global attention with the emergence of DeepSeek, a language model challenging established players like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude AI. One of the key figures in its development is 29-year-old researcher Luo Fuli, whose work in natural language processing (NLP) has been instrumental in advancing DeepSeek’s capabilities.

Luo studied computer science at Beijing Normal University before moving to Peking University’s Institute of Computational Linguistics. In 2019, she published eight papers at the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) conference, a significant milestone that attracted attention from major technology firms.

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Following this achievement, Luo joined Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, where she led the development of VECO, a multilingual pre-training model, and contributed to the AliceMind open-source project. Her expertise in NLP positioned her as a leading researcher in AI development.

Luo joined DeepSeek in 2022 when it was a quantitative hedge fund. As the company transitioned into AI research, her knowledge in NLP played a key role in developing DeepSeek-V2. The model has since gained global recognition, with performance levels comparable to leading AI chatbots.

DeepSeek’s app launched in January 2024 and quickly became the most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store in the United States, surpassing ChatGPT. The success of DeepSeek R1 has impacted financial markets, contributing to a decline in the stock prices of AI-related firms, including Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta.

Read also: DeepSeek copied OpenAI — Experts

Luo’s contributions to AI research led to a job offer from Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, who reportedly offered her an annual salary of 10 million yuan ($1.4 million), according to the South China Morning Post. She also co-authored a paper in 2024 that made DeepSeek’s open-source codes available to the research community.

DeepSeek’s expansion

Founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng in Hangzhou, DeepSeek has built its AI models at significantly lower costs than its global competitors. The company’s DeepSeek-V3 model rivals industry leaders and has been developed for less than $6 million. DeepSeek’s open-access approach has contributed to its growing popularity.

The research team includes 150 Chinese researchers and engineers, along with specialists in data automation. The company’s approach of using open-source models and lower-cost hardware has positioned it as a significant player in AI development.