TDLR Highflyer started very much as exclusive ML/AI focused quant investment firm, with a lot of compute for finance AI and mining. Then CCP cracked down on mining... then finance, so Liang probably decided to pivot to LLM/AGI, which likely started as side project, but probably not anymore now the DeepSeek has taken off and Liang just met with PRC premiere a few days ago. DeepSeek being independent company doesn't mean DeepSeek isn't Liang's side project using compute bought with hedge fund money that is primarily used for hedgefund work, cushioned/allowed to get by with low margins by hedgefund profits.
That's a fair distinction. IMO should still be categorized as side project in the sense that it's Liang's pet project, the same way Jeff Bezos spend $$$ on his forever clock with seperate org but ultimately with Amazon resources. DeepSeek / Liang fixating on AGI and not profit making or loss-making since hardware / capex deprecation is likely eaten by High Flyer / quant side. No reason to believe DeepSeek spent 100ms to build out another compute chain from High Flyer. Myth that seasoned finance quants using 20% time to crush US researchers is false, but reality/narrative that a bunch of fresh out of school GenZ kids from tier1 PRC universities destroying US researchers is kind of just as embarassing.
https://www.pekingnology.com/p/ceo-of-deepseeks-parent-high-...
TDLR Highflyer started very much as exclusive ML/AI focused quant investment firm, with a lot of compute for finance AI and mining. Then CCP cracked down on mining... then finance, so Liang probably decided to pivot to LLM/AGI, which likely started as side project, but probably not anymore now the DeepSeek has taken off and Liang just met with PRC premiere a few days ago. DeepSeek being independent company doesn't mean DeepSeek isn't Liang's side project using compute bought with hedge fund money that is primarily used for hedgefund work, cushioned/allowed to get by with low margins by hedgefund profits.