Guangzhou math genius girl, 25, secures over 1.4 billion in funding, with a company valuation of 11 billion

Ask AI · How can Axiom’s AI system revolutionize the code verification industry?

Hong Le Tong, a 25-year-old math prodigy from Guangzhou who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oxford University, dropped out of Stanford to start a business. Just a few weeks ago, she secured $200 million in funding, with a valuation of $1.6 billion, roughly equivalent to RMB 11 billion.

She says she is enthusiastic about using AI to do math. “How does math make money? From the very beginning, we faced this challenge. Now, business signals are much clearer: math can create value because it can verify itself and check itself.”

Hong Le Tong named her company Axiom (axiom), with the goal of creating “AI mathematicians.” What a group of mathematicians is tinkering with, in brief, is an AI system that can automatically verify computer code. The principle is similar to how mathematicians prove complex math problems.

Its value lies in this: when AI writes code, it can’t know when the code has vulnerabilities. With this idea, in August 2024, Hong Le Tong secured a $9.6 million seed round, roughly equivalent to RMB 66 million. In her vision, in the future Axiom’s products could serve hedge funds and quantitative trading companies, quickly solving complex math problems related to asset pricing and stock market prediction.

In mid-March, Hong Le Tong announced that she had raised $200 million in Series A funding, about RMB 1.4 billion, from venture capital firms such as Menlo Ventures, Greycroft, and Madrona. At present, Axiom has more than 20 employees, and Hong Le Tong is busy hiring. She frequently posts recruitment information on overseas social platforms, looking for people who are like-minded in “doing math with AI.”