57-year-old world-class mathematician gives up lifelong teaching position to join AI math company founded by 24-year-old student
The global mathematics community has recently witnessed a rare personnel change. Ken Ono, a renowned mathematician from the University of Virginia, announced his departure from his long-held academic position to join Axiom Math, a startup founded by his 24-year-old former student Carina Hong. This decision has drawn widespread attention in both academic and tech circles.
Ken Ono has long been skeptical of AI's capabilities in the field of mathematics, but after witnessing firsthand the breakthroughs of the latest models in reasoning and proof, he decided to officially dive into AI research. He will serve as the 'Founding Mathematician' at Axiom Math, responsible for guiding the training, benchmarking, and research direction of mathematical reasoning models.
Axiom Math, established not long ago, has already secured $64 million in funding, aiming to create an AI mathematician capable of executing mathematical reasoning, automated proofs, and formal verification, while exploring commercial applications in scientific research, security audits, engineering validation, and more.
Company founder Carina Hong is one of the most prominent young scholars in the North American mathematics community in recent years. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in mathematics, and later pursued a dual Ph.D. in mathematics and law at Stanford University, having been nominated for one of the highest undergraduate awards in mathematics, the Morgan Prize.
As an early student of Ken Ono, she participated in high-level mathematical research during her undergraduate studies and later led the mathematical reasoning direction in Meta's frontier AI team, establishing an elite team composed of several former Meta researchers.
The emergence of Axiom Math is seen by the industry as a new signal in the AI competition: after the 'large models hit a reasoning bottleneck,' mathematical capability may become the core breakthrough for the next stage of intelligent systems. Ken Ono's joining is regarded as a significant endorsement of this trend by the traditional academic community.
Ken Ono is of Japanese descent, while Carina Hong is of Chinese descent.
