Kimi CEO Zhilin Yang: The smartest thing in college wasn't coding, it was drumming

Kimi CEO Zhilin Yang shares his college story: he chased problems, not grades. He built three algorithms for rumor tracking, one cutting labeling costs by 95% (still used by Tencent and Huawei). In two months at Stanford, he won a global cancer contest, beating Stanford's own team. He cracked a tough formula while walking home with headphones. He also led a campus rock band, calling it the best time of his life. Now Kimi K3 sits above Claude.

• Claude
• Kimi
• AI startup
• Zhilin Yang
• founder story