A $80 Billion Photo: What Happened to HRT’s 2015 “Interns”? 🚀 Some photos capture just youth at the moment—but looking back, they reveal the script that changed the world. This is the group photo of HRT (Hudson River Trading), New York’s top quantitative trading firm, taken during its first winter internship cohort in 2015. Back then, these ten young people gathered to code, order takeout, and stay up late debating strategies—none of them imagined that ten years later, the combined valuations of the companies they founded would exceed $80 billion. This list is堪称 the “Huangpu Military Academy” of AI and Web3: • Jeffrey Yan: Founder & CEO of Hyperliquid, a DeFi legend (valued at ~$40B). He brought HFT-level speed to on-chain trading. • Alexandr Wang: Founder & CEO of Scale AI. He built the “infrastructure” of the AI era—turning Scale AI into a unicorn (valued at $29B) and positioning himself as a core leader at Meta AI. • Scott Wu: Founder of Cognition AI (valued at $10.2B). The genius behind Devin, dubbed “the world’s most powerful AI programmer.” • Jesse Zhang: Founder & CEO of Decagon (valued at $4.5B). A pioneer in AI-powered automated customer service. 💡 Why is this photo so valuable? 1. Collision of Minds: As the pinnacle of HFT (high-frequency trading), HRT selected only the world’s top one-in-a-million minds. These individuals learned how to process massive datasets and compete on millisecond-level timing. 2. Deep Network Integration: True networking isn’t about exchanging business cards—it’s about fighting side by side under extreme pressure to solve real-world problems, just like they did. This “battle-bond” gave them unparalleled foundational trust when founding companies, raising capital, hiring talent, or forging strategic partnerships. In one sentence: Sometimes, the teams that shake the world began as just ten people in a New York winter night, eating pizza and wearing hoodies. #HRT #AI #ScaleAI #Hyperliquid #Startup #QuantitativeTrading #SiliconValleyLegend #TheTruthAboutNetworking