Jesse Zhang
 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikitia's general notability guideline. |
Jesse Zhang | |
|---|---|
| Add a Photo | |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
Jesse Zhang is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist, who along Ashwin Sreenivas, co-founded and serves as the CEO of Decagon, a San Francisco-based startup that builds generative artificial intelligence agents for customer service. He also co-founded the gameplay video platform Lowkey, which was acquired by Niantic in 2021.[1][2]
Early life and education
Zhang was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado.[2] In 2012 the Boulder Daily Camera ran a "Student spotlight" feature on him as a 15 year old sophomore at Fairview High School in Boulder.[3]
As a high school student Zhang excelled in mathematics competitions. At the Colorado Mathematical Olympiad, held at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, he shared first prize in 2013 as a sophomore and then won first prize outright in 2014 as a junior at Fairview High School, earning him recognition from the competition’s Hall of Fame.[4] Zhang also has a presence in regional science fairs.[5]
Beginning near the end of his first year of high school, Zhang interned in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he became interested in atmospheric science.[6] A 2015 Q and A published by TEDxMileHigh described his research on polar vortex weakening and sudden stratospheric warming, and noted that his work had led to first author papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research and the American Geophysical Union journal Space Weather, as well as success at national science competitions such as the Intel Science Talent Search.[6]
In 2015 Zhang was one of forty finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, representing Fairview High School and the state of Colorado.[7] According to the finalist biographies published by Society for Science, his project investigated how heat carried into the Arctic by the North Atlantic Current could trigger sudden stratospheric warming events and polar vortex weakening, using nearly three decades of observational data.[8] The biography also records that he earned perfect SAT scores, was first author on two journal articles about lunar tides, played basketball, founded a Physics Bowl club and organized an extracurricular math class for middle school students, several of whom later won top prizes in Colorado MATHCOUNTS competitions.[8]
After graduating from Fairview, Zhang enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied computer science.[6][2] He completed his degree on an accelerated schedule, graduating a year early.[2]
Career
Early career
Following college, Zhang worked as a software engineer at Google and later as an intern trader at Citadel Securities.[1] TechCrunch has noted that he gained experience at both large technology companies and startups before founding his own ventures.[1]
Lowkey
After his stint at Google and Citadel, Zhang co founded Lowkey, a startup focused on recording and sharing short video clips of gameplay for casual gamers.[1][2] The Lowkey app allowed users to capture videos on their computers and synchronize them to their phones, where simple editing tools made it easy to create mobile friendly highlights to share privately or publicly in a social feed. In December 2021 Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, announced that it was acquiring the team behind Lowkey to enhance the social features of its augmented reality games and platforms. The experience of iterating on a consumer product shaped Zhang's views on user experience and customer feedback.[2]
Decagon
After the Lowkey acquisition, Zhang partnered with Ashwin Sreenivas to found Decagon, a company that develops AI powered customer service agents for enterprises.[1][2] Decagon’s platform ingests a company’s knowledge base and past customer support conversations and then uses large language models to power chat, email and voice agents that can respond to customer inquiries in natural language.[1][9] Unlike simple question answering bots, Decagon’s agents are designed to take actions on behalf of customers and support staff: TechCrunch reports that they can integrate with back end systems to process refunds, cancel subscriptions, categorize messages, create bug reports and draft internal documentation.[1]
Reuters has described Decagon as part of a broader wave of generative AI tools intended to replace or augment human contact center workers.[9] Zhang has argued in interviews that the goal is to automate routine tasks while letting human agents focus on cases that require complex judgment, and that customers will only accept AI agents if they consistently resolve issues rather than behaving like legacy chatbots.[1] According to Goldsea, Decagon builds on foundation models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere, adding its own modules tuned for each client’s workflows in order to hit aggressive cost and resolution targets.[2]
By mid 2025 Decagon’s customers reportedly included companies such as Hertz, Duolingo, Eventbrite and the fintech firm Chime.[10] Goldsea also stated that within roughly two years of launch Decagon had sold its customer support agents to customers including Notion, ClassPass, Substack and Bilt, generating around ten million dollars in annual recurring revenue or contracted revenue.[2]
Funding and valuation
TechCrunch reported in June 2024 that Decagon had raised a total of 35 million dollars in seed and Series A funding, with Accel leading the Series A round and Andreessen Horowitz, A* and angel investor Elad Gil among the backers.[1] On the same day, Reuters described the funding as a combined seed and Series A raise intended to help Decagon compete in the fast growing market for AI based customer support tools.[9]
In June 2025 Reuters reported that Decagon had closed a 131 million dollar Series C funding round led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company at 1.5 billion dollars.[10] The article noted that the round came less than a year after a 65 million dollar Series B financing that valued Decagon at 650 million dollars, making the company one of the most highly valued independent startups focused on AI customer support.[10] Goldsea’s profile of Zhang likewise summarized Decagon’s fundraising as a sequence of a 5 million dollar seed round, a 30 million dollar Series A, a 65 million dollar Series B and a 100 million dollar Series C that brought total funding to roughly 200 million dollars at a 1.5 billion dollar valuation, though the precise breakdown differs from Reuters’ reporting.[2]
An article in The Economic Times, citing people familiar with the company, stated that all four of Decagon’s funding rounds had been preempted by investors, meaning venture firms offered term sheets before the company formally began fundraising.[11] The same report said that by late 2024 and early 2025 investors were discussing potential future rounds that could value Decagon at several billion dollars, reflecting intense competition among venture capital firms to back fast growing generative AI startups.[11]
Public speaking
In June 2015 Zhang spoke at TEDxMileHigh in Denver about his atmospheric science research on polar vortex weakening and its implications for weather prediction.[6]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Wiggers, Kyle (18 June 2024). "Decagon claims its customer service bots are smarter than average". TechCrunch. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 Nahm, H Y (12 May 2025). "Jesse Zhang's Decagon AI Closes $100 Mil C Round for $1.5 Bil Valuation". Goldsea. Asian American Daily. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ "Student spotlight: Jesse Zhang, 15-year-old sophomore at Boulder's Fairview High School". Boulder Daily Camera. Boulder, Colorado. 10 November 2012. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ "Hall of Fame". The Soifer Mathematical Olympiad. University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ "Boulder Valley announces regional science fair winners". Boulder Daily Camera. Boulder, Colorado. 24 February 2015. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Q+A with TEDxMileHigh 2015 Speaker Jesse Zhang". TEDxMileHigh. 29 May 2015. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ "Intel Science Talent Search – 2015". Society for Science. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Intel Science Talent Search 2015 Finalist Biographies" (PDF). Society for Science. 2015. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Tong, Anna (18 June 2024). "Decagon raises $35 million for AI-powered customer service". Reuters. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Tong, Anna (23 June 2025). "Customer service AI startup Decagon raises $131 million". Reuters. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "VCs to AI startups: please take our money". The Economic Times. 18 October 2024. Retrieved 21 November 2025.
External links
This article "Jesse Zhang" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.