# DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng built $60B powerhouse without overtime or KPIs

> China's tech industry is famous for 996, the punishing nine-to-nine, six-days-a-week grind that many startups treat as the price of ambition. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng says his company ignored all of it. In his telling, the lab that went from unknown to a reported $60 billion valuation in three years did so without forced overtime and without the KPIs, or hard performance targets, that dominate most tech firms. It is an eye-catching claim, and worth a little skepticism, but it fits DeepSeek's reputation for doing more with less. The same lab rattled the industry by training competitive models on a fraction of the usual budget, and its founder frames a calmer culture as part of that efficiency rather than a luxury bolted on afterward. Whether or not the story is fully accurate, it lands at a moment when much of the AI world is quietly questioning whether crunch actually produces better research, or just more of it.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Fortune · Published Thursday, August 6, 2026_

## Wortins' read

China's tech industry is famous for 996, the punishing nine-to-nine, six-days-a-week grind that many startups treat as the price of ambition. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng says his company ignored all of it. In his telling, the lab that went from unknown to a reported $60 billion valuation in three years did so without forced overtime and without the KPIs, or hard performance targets, that dominate most tech firms. It is an eye-catching claim, and worth a little skepticism, but it fits DeepSeek's reputation for doing more with less. The same lab rattled the industry by training competitive models on a fraction of the usual budget, and its founder frames a calmer culture as part of that efficiency rather than a luxury bolted on afterward. Whether or not the story is fully accurate, it lands at a moment when much of the AI world is quietly questioning whether crunch actually produces better research, or just more of it.

## Source

[Read the full story at Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/08/01/deepseek-founder-liang-wenfeng-workers-dont-do-overtime-or-kpis-china-996-culture/)

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