Mit 24 Jahren hat sie 400 Millionen Yuan an Kapital beschafft.

There are more and more faces from the class of 2000 and later in the venture capital scene.

According to information from the investment industry, Axiom Math has successfully completed its first round of financing, raising $64 million (about 460 million yuan). The investment was led by B Capital, and institutions such as Greycroft, Madrona, and Menlo Ventures also participated in the financing. The post - financing valuation of the company is $300 million (about 2 billion yuan).

The founder of Axiom is Carina Hong from the class of 2000. She was born and raised in Guangzhou, attended the prestigious South China Normal University Affiliated High School, and won multiple medals in math olympiads. Subsequently, she studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), completed her master's degree at the University of Oxford, and is currently a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. The founding of Axiom was the result of a conversation in a café.

(Image source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Without us noticing, founders from the class of 2000 and later are increasingly taking the stage in the AI field.

10 people, first - round financing completed

Company valuation of 2 billion yuan

Who is Axiom?

The company's website shows that this emerging AI company positions itself as "a starting point for an artificial intelligence mathematician to create a self - improving super - intelligence reasoning system." In other words, it is a model that can solve complex mathematical problems, create detailed reasoning steps for problem - solving, and verify the solutions at the same time.

Specifically, Axiom aims to convert English - language mathematical content from textbooks, essays, and journals into programmed knowledge so that artificial intelligence can solve mathematical problems and verify the solutions. In the future, the application scope of this model may be extended to financial modeling, chip architecture, and even quantitative trading systems. According to the vision of founder Carina Hong, this model may be able to propose new mathematical conjectures and thereby generate new knowledge.

Why did they choose the AI - math sector? There is a little episode here. This year, it was reported that ChatGPT o3 cheated in a math test. Carina Hong pointed out on social media that OpenAI's large model may have performed well in the math tests because the company had already encountered these questions during the model's training.

As an example, she mentioned that in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), some large language models can achieve an accuracy of 96%, but when asked to show the proof process, the score drops to 5%. "Why is there such a difference? Because the training method is problematic." The combinatorial mathematical problems that current large language models cannot solve perfectly are exactly Carina Hong's research area.

From Axiom's perspective, artificial intelligence offers a historical turning point, namely that discoveries in the mathematical field can progress exponentially. So, we are at the beginning of a mathematical renaissance. This renaissance is based on three pillars: artificial intelligence, programming languages, and mathematics. All three together drive a series of discoveries, and each breakthrough provides the basis for the next innovation.

Now that the first round of financing is completed, Axiom's core team has made its debut. Although there are currently only 10 full - time employees, several of them are AI experts from Meta.

For example, the current CTO, Shubho Sengupta, who led the Meta FAIR team and developed OpenGo and CrypTen. He also participated in the research of a distributed training system at Google and is one of the first experts to develop CUDA technology. François Charton led the research on large language models in mathematics and theoretical physics at Meta and began researching how to apply Transformer technology to complex mathematical problems in 2019. Hugh Leather was also a former AI research scientist at Meta and developed some of the first large language models for compiler and GPU code generation.

The partner of B Capital, the lead investor in this financing round, explained on the company's website that solving complex mathematical problems is the core of many human inventions. A tool that can propose and verify new quantitative hypotheses to make informed decisions is therefore of great value. Axiom's team also has unique advantages to seize this opportunity and turn advanced mathematical reasoning technologies into reality.

"Carina Hong is an outstanding mathematician. She not only has remarkable academic achievements but also the passion and dedication that distinguish the best entrepreneurs. She combines far - sighted leadership with unwavering determination." Her journey has just begun.

Under the leadership of a talented student from the class of 2000

From Guangzhou

Axiom's story is inseparable from Carina Hong, who has consistently achieved outstanding results.

Carina Hong was born in Guangzhou and is 24 years old. Her parents are from Chaoshan. Although her parents did not graduate from college, Carina Hong showed remarkable mathematical talent at a young age. She attended the South China Normal University Affiliated High School, a prestigious school in Guangdong. In high school, she was one of only four girls in the provincial team for the math olympiad and won multiple good rankings in competitions such as the "Hua Luogeng Cup" and the National High School Mathematics League. In 2019, she started a double - major in mathematics and physics at MIT.

During her undergraduate studies, Carina Hong was the president of the math club, completed 20 graduate and doctoral courses, and published several high - quality academic articles in areas such as the L - function of modular elliptic curves and K3 surfaces, the Moonshine conjecture, and the Pop - Stack sorting algorithm. Before and after graduation, she first won the Schafer Mathematics Excellence Award, which is awarded to only one undergraduate female student each year, and later the Morgan Prize, the highest award for North American math students. She is the fifth woman to receive this award.

At the end of 2022, Carina Hong successfully received the Rhodes Scholarship from the University of Oxford and is one of only four Chinese recipients. The Rhodes Scholarship is one of the oldest and most prestigious international scholarship programs in the world and is also known as the "Nobel Prize for undergraduates."

Subsequently, Carina Hong completed a master's degree in neuroscience at the University of Oxford in the UK. She also participated in research projects in artificial intelligence and machine learning at University College London. At that time, she said, "What will the interaction between artificial intelligence and scientists look like in the future? This is the topic I want to research in the future."

In August 2024, Carina Hong started a doctoral program in mathematics and a law program at Stanford University. "I've always been a researcher," she said in an interview. "I'd like to solve real and difficult technical problems the most." Soon, she took the AI stage during her doctoral studies.

The founding of Axiom originated from a conversation in a café.

One weekend last autumn, Carina Hong had a conversation with Shubho Sengupta, who was still working at Meta at the time, in a café near Stanford. The two talked for several hours about the intersections of their research areas and the possibility of developing artificial intelligence to solve the world's most difficult mathematical problems.

Shortly after this conversation, Carina Hong dropped out of Stanford University and started founding Axiom. Interestingly, all of Axiom's conference rooms are named after famous mathematicians, such as Gauss and Ada Lovelace.

When DeepSeek attracted global attention at the beginning of this year, Carina Hong commented, "A small, focused, and independent team. An excellent team of idealists. They have strong determination and work hands - on. The most valuable thing is the belief that consists of idealism and mission. This is the story of DeepSeek, and this is the story I want to write myself."

As Axiom says on its website, "The future of mathematical discoveries begins here."

Engagement in artificial intelligence

Founders from the class of 2000 and later take the stage

All over the world, founders from the class of 2000 and later are taking the stage in the AI field.

Recently, Sola Solutions, a company founded by two 2000s - born students from MIT - the 22 - year - old Chinese - American student Jessica Wu and the 23 - year - old Neil Deshmukh - received financing from a well - known venture capital in Silicon Valley. The company's website shows that the financing consists of a $3.5 - million seed financing round led by Conviction and a $17.5 - million Series A financing round led by a16z and co - financed by Conviction, totaling $21 million (about 150 million yuan).

Such cases are becoming more and more common.

In May this year, the AI startup Anysphere completed a financing round of $900 million (about 6.5 billion yuan) and reached a company valuation of $9 billion, making it one of the most popular AI - programming companies this year. The company is led by four young founders. In 2022, Michael Truell and three of his classmates, all graduates of MIT, decided to enter the AI - programming field. Their product, Cursor, has revolutionized the programming method and quickly gained popularity in the Silicon Valley AI scene.

Similarly, the AI recruitment portal Mercor completed a Series B financing of $100 million in March this year and reached a company valuation of $2 billion, which is an astonishing growth rate. The founders of the company are three 2000s - born students who dropped out of school. In their sophomore year, they founded Mercor in their dormitory and then decided to drop out of Harvard University and Georgetown University to fully devote themselves to entrepreneurship.

If we look around in China, we can observe similar cases.

At the beginning of this year, three "2000s geeks" from Tsinghua University - Min Yuheng, Cheng Yi, and Li Yizhe - founded a company called Lingchufangfang, which develops robots. The company has now completed financing in the billions in the Angel + and Angel ++ rounds and has attracted well - known institutions such as Jiying Capital, Tongchuang Weiye, Lihe Kechuang, Shuimu Fund, Mizuho Lihe, and Ralph Capital as investors.

There is also Lingchu Intelligence, which received Angel - round financing led by Hillhouse Capital and BlueRun Ventures. The co - founder of the company, Chen Yuanpei, is a 2000s - born person who is fascinated by robots and has studied as a visiting student with Professors Karen Liu and Fei - Fei Li at Stanford University. Yang Fengyu, the founder and CEO of the Embodied Intelligence company UniX AI, was born in 2000, studied computer science at the University of Michigan, and founded a company in China after obtaining his doctorate from Yale University. His company has also attracted the attention of many venture capitalists.

A group of 2000s - born people is growing quietly but surely. Some investors have analyzed that in this wave of AI entrepreneurship, founders from the class of 2000 and later are on par with those from the classes of 1980 and 1990, and in fact, the former have even greater advantages. Many things are too new to directly apply existing experiences. The 2000s - born people have no burdens from the past and are more open to new things.

"We firmly believe that entrepreneurship often belongs to the youth," said Dai Yusen, Managing Partner of ZhenFund, recently. "Ignorance brings courage. Many technological innovations occur because people are not afraid despite their knowledge and thus develop new ideas."

"The youth have great courage and will have their time." Every generation of young entrepreneurs will surely leave their mark in history.

This article is from the WeChat account "Investment World" (ID: pedaily2012). Authors: Liu Bo and Wang Lu. Published by 36Kr with permission.