2013 Records Show Jeff Yan Participated in Satellite Project in High School
Jeff Yan, founder of Hyperliquid, had his 2013 U.S. Physics Team records show that he was attending Palo Alto High School, about to enter Harvard, and had been selected for the U.S. Physics Olympiad team and participated in the MOP math Olympiad training camp.
The records indicate this was his second time participating in physics training. Since the summer of 2012, he interned at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center, developing and managing database analysis tools for a solar imaging satellite set to launch. Across the school was Stanford, where he took the opportunity to enroll in several math courses.
He founded a physics club with his friend Daniel, discussing physics and conducting experiments during lunch breaks each week, with their favorite experiment being shattering "Rupert's Tear." His hobbies included ultimate frisbee, piano, Go, running with his dog, snowboarding, and napping. At the time, he was considering physics, mathematics, or computer science and wrote, "I hope to stubbornly hold onto this freedom forever."
Public records confirm that Yan won a silver medal at the 2012 International Physics Olympiad and a gold medal in 2013, ranking 24th in the world. He studied mathematics and computer science at Harvard on a full scholarship and later joined Hudson River Trading. A profile in Colossus in April 2026 will introduce him as 31 years old.
Yan later founded Hyperliquid, which has a team of about 11 people and has not taken venture capital, with profits exceeding $900 million in 2025. The protocol supports perpetual contracts and maintains low hardware threshold nodes.
Market Mechanism: Early competitions and internship experiences provided the technical foundation for subsequent high-frequency trading and protocol development. The lack of VC pathways allows the team to maintain a small scale with high profits; exchanges relying on external financing face higher dilution and governance costs, while self-funded and technology-driven protocols benefit from more direct revenue distribution.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Jeff Yan grew up in Redwood Shores, California, with parents who were Chinese immigrants. After his parents divorced when he was in third grade, he was raised by his mother. He was introduced to math competitions in eighth grade, entered the U.S. Math Olympiad training camp in ninth grade, and later self-studied physics, winning a silver medal at the International Physics Olympiad in 2012 and a gold medal in 2013 (ranking 24th in the world). He attended Harvard on a full scholarship studying mathematics and computer science, and after graduation, joined Hudson River Trading, later founding Chameleon Trading and eventually Hyperliquid.
In terms of capital pathways, Yan funded Hyperliquid's development through trading profits rather than venture capital, maintaining a team of about 11 people and allocating a significant amount of tokens to users. His early internship at Lockheed Martin developing database tools and training in physics competitions provided the engineering and mathematical foundation for building low-latency trading systems and on-chain protocols, allowing the project to achieve high profits without external financing.
This differs from the rapid expansion path of most crypto exchanges through multiple rounds of financing and resembles the early quantitative trading firms that recruited talent from competition backgrounds. The current on-chain finance is transitioning from "financing-driven scale" to "technology and profit-driven infrastructure," with Hyperliquid positioning itself at the protocol layer rather than as a traditional exchange.
Essentially, it reflects capital concentration and technological substitution: when founders with competition-level technical capabilities can build protocols with their own profits, the necessity for external capital decreases. The mechanism lies in the core barriers of high-frequency trading and on-chain systems being low latency and correctness verification, which early training in physics and mathematics provided, thus reducing reliance on large-scale financing and allowing revenue to be more directly converted into protocol and user returns rather than equity dilution.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
High school competitions and internships often determine systemic capabilities a decade later.
Building protocols with own profits is harder to dilute than financing expansion.
Maintaining freedom of choice allows for non-standard paths more than setting directions early.