Meet Hyperbolic CEO Jasper Zhang: Making Open Access AI a Reality for Everyone Everywhere

Dr. Jasper (Yue) Zhang, Co-Founder & CEO at Hyperbolic, is on a mission to bring open-access AI to the world. With a Ph.D. in Mathematics and a background in blockchain and quantitative research, Jasper has the tools and expertise to tackle open-access AI’s biggest challenges. This is his story.

“Open source does not mean open access…”

Jasper realized this after seeing the same problem come up time and time again: Talented individuals with promising ideas — from students, to professors, and developers — unable to make progress with their projects because of limited access to computational resources.

It became clear to Jasper that open-sourcing AI models alone was insufficient to drive the next wave of innovation across AI, blockchain, and web3. Those moments revealed to him that the true bottleneck to progress was not a lack of talent or enthusiasm.

It was a lack of access to compute.

Driven by this conviction, Jasper co-founded Hyperbolic with a clear purpose: to make open access to AI a reality for anyone with an idea.

“Hyperbolic is a mission-driven company,” according to Jasper. “We are doing this because we believe that the future of AI should not be controlled by a small group of people, but shared by everyone. We want to empower individuals, startups, researchers, and communities with the AI tools they need to advance humanity.”

Jasper spent his early childhood honing his math skills by competing in math challenges with his mother. He went on to win gold medals in the Chinese Mathematical Olympiad and Russian Mathematical Olympiad during high school, the first place in Chinese Mathematics Competition for College Students, and two gold medals consecutively in the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition during is PhD. At the Alibaba awards ceremony Jasper celebrated with a rap performance.

At the time he said: “My dream is to become a mathematician who can have an impact on mathematics, even the world, and to cultivate the next generation of students who are interested in mathematics.”

With math being his bread and butter, he took his hard-earned knowledge (and talent) to UC Berkeley, where he completed a five-year doctorate in a record-breaking two years. He then worked as a Quantitative Researcher at Citadel Securities, and went on to work as a Senior Blockchain Researcher at Ava Labs, where he focused on the performance, reliability, and security of consensus protocols.

Today, under Jasper’s leadership, the Hyperbolic team is working towards a world where generational breakthroughs aren’t left in the dust simply because great brain power lacks affordable computing power.

“Everyone wins when everyone contributes,” Jasper emphasizes. This core belief — that collaboration leads to innovation — drives Jasper and his team at Hyperbolic to create a future where AI is an openly shared asset. A future where individuals and organizations have unrestricted access to powerful AI resources at their fingertips consolidated on a single, easy-to-use platform.

With Hyperbolic, Jasper is making all this a reality by building what he calls the “Open-access AI Cloud”. The cloud provides decentralized GPU compute and inference powered by a robust architecture that includes a decentralized orchestration layer, verification services, privacy solutions, and more. By harnessing the untapped potential of underutilized GPU’s, and then coupling it with the power of verifiable inference, Jasper and his team are democratizing access to cutting-edge AI resources for anyone with an idea and the wherewithal to build it.

“At Hyperbolic, we believe that we go further faster when we go together, and we’re building the definitive platform to help entrepreneurs and researchers realize their AI dreams.”

Fun Facts about Jasper Zhang:

• He is the fastest person to complete a Ph.D from UC Berkeley in history (under two years)
• His doctoral thesis, “Guts, Dehn Fillings and Volumes of Hyperbolic Manifolds,” is a study of three-dimensional topology and gave him the idea of the name of his future startup
• He holds two Gold Medals at the 2018 and 2020 Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition
• He placed first at the 2017 Chinese Mathematics Competition of Chinese College Students.
• He won gold medals in both the Chinese Mathematical Olympiad (CMO) and the All-Russian Mathematical Olympiad (RMO)

To learn more about Dr. Jasper Zhang and his groundbreaking work with Hyperbolic, connect with him on X and follow Hyperbolic’s journey as they redefine the future where AI empowers humanity to its fullest potential.