HYSTA Founders Talk: The AI Founder’s Journey — Building, Exiting & What’s Next
Two AI startups. Two acquisitions. What did their founders get right—and where do they see opportunity next?
Eigen AI was acquired by AI cloud company Nebius just 10 months after its founding, with an announced transaction value at signing of approximately US$643 million. Nexa AI was acquired by Qualcomm in March 2026, two years after its founding. Working on cloud inference optimization and on-device AI, these teams turned frontier technology into businesses that attracted major industry platforms.
Join HYSTA and the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford (ACSSS) for fireside chats with Ryan Hanrui Wang, co-founder and former CEO of Eigen AI, and Alex Chen and Zack Li, co-founders of Nexa AI. We’ll explore their early bets, customer breakthroughs, pivots, and the decisions behind choosing acquisition over continued independent growth.
Nexa AI was a member of HYSTA’s 2024 Founders Club cohort and an award-winning project at the 2024 HYSTA Annual Conference Demo Day. We’re delighted to welcome its founders back to share their experience with the next generation of builders.
Now continuing their work at Nebius and Qualcomm, our speakers also bring firsthand perspectives on cloud and on-device inference, agents, multimodal AI, and where small teams can build lasting value.
Founders, aspiring founders, and VCs are welcome. The event will be conducted in Mandarin.
WHAT WE’LL DISCUSS
• Finding the opportunity: Why inference optimization and on-device AI? How did the teams identify real demand and win their first customers?
• Building a competitive edge: How do research results become products? Which breakthroughs mattered—and which assumptions had to change?
• Choosing an exit: How did the founders weigh fundraising, independent growth, and acquisition? What should early-stage founders prepare for?
• Looking ahead: Over the next 12–24 months, how will cloud and edge AI evolve? What opportunities will agents, multimodal models, and changing inference costs create?
AGENDA
9:30–10:00 | Check-in & Networking
10:00–10:05 | Opening
10:05–10:50 | Fireside Chat I — Eigen AI: From Inference Optimization to Acquisition
10:50–11:00 | Break
11:00–11:50 | Fireside Chat II — Nexa AI: From On-Device AI Startup to Qualcomm
11:50–12:00 | Closing & Networking
Each fireside chat includes audience Q&A.
Session I
Guest: Ryan Hanrui Wang
Moderator: Dan Zhang, CEO & Executive Director, HYSTA; VP, Q Bay Center
Session II
Guests: Alex Chen and Zack Li
Moderator: Steven Guan, Co-Lead, HYSTA Founders Club
MEET THE SPEAKERS
Ryan Hanrui Wang
SVP, Nebius | Co-founder & Former CEO, Eigen AI
Ryan Hanrui Wang is Senior Vice President at Nebius, where he leads inference, post-training, and agentic systems. He co-founded and served as CEO of Eigen AI, acquired by Nebius in 2026 just 10 months after its founding. Under his leadership, Eigen AI built a full-stack inference platform delivering leading performance across 25 major open-source models.
Ryan earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT as Professor Song Han’s first doctoral student and graduated from Fudan University with highest honors. His research focuses on efficient AI computing, generative AI inference, and computer architecture. His work includes SpAtten and Hardware-Aware Transformers; his open-source models and code have surpassed one million downloads and have been integrated into IBM products and the PyTorch ecosystem.
Alex Chen
Director, Qualcomm | Co-founder & Former CEO and Chief Scientist, Nexa AI
Alex Chen holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and founded Nexa AI in 2024 to make generative AI run efficiently on everyday hardware. He led development of NexaSDK and the Octopus and Omni model families, enabling language and multimodal models to run across NPUs, GPUs, and CPUs. After Qualcomm acquired Nexa AI in March 2026, two years after its founding, Alex joined as a Director. He leads generative AI inference research and engineering for Snapdragon platforms, working at the intersection of models, software, and hardware.
Zack Li
Tech Lead (Senior Staff), Qualcomm | Co-founder & Former CTO, Nexa AI
Zack Li co-founded Nexa AI and served as CTO until its acquisition by Qualcomm. He is now Tech Lead (Senior Staff) at Qualcomm, leading development of GenieX, a generative AI inference runtime for Snapdragon platforms. His work focuses on high-performance inference engines, hardware-software co-design, and bringing advanced AI models to edge devices. Previously, he worked on on-device AI at Google and Amazon Lab126, with experience in model deployment, performance optimization, and edge-cloud collaboration. He holds a master’s degree in Operations Research from Stanford University.
JOIN US
Whether you’re building a company, exploring your first startup idea, or investing in AI, bring your questions and join the conversation. Meet fellow founders and investors, hear candid lessons from the journey, and exchange perspectives on the next wave of AI opportunities.
Co-hosted by HYSTA and Stanford ACSSS.
Registration is subject to host approval. Approved and invited guests can view the precise location.