# Yang Zhilin

Co-founder and CEO, Moonshot AI. TIME100 AI 2026, Innovators. A Pink Floyd devotee, he named his AI lab, Moonshot AI, after the band's album The Dark Side of the Moon. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/yang-zhilin/))

- Born: 1992, Shantou, Guangdong, China ([app001.ftchinese.com](http://app001.ftchinese.com/interactive/288418/en), [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Zhilin))
- Education: PhD, Machine learning, Carnegie Mellon University, 2019; BS, Computer science, Tsinghua University, 2015 ([thenationalnews.com](https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/07/17/zhilin-yang-moonshot-ai-kimi/), [magazine.cs.cmu.edu](https://magazine.cs.cmu.edu/ai-research-transforms-industries), [time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/yang-zhilin/))
- Career: Moonshot AI (Co-founder and CEO, 2023 to now); Recurrent AI (Co-founder, 2016 to now) ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/yang-zhilin/), [businessinsider.com](https://www.businessinsider.com/moonshot-ai-kimi-k3-founder-professor-on-unique-strengths-qualities-2026-7), [reuters.com](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/moonshot-execs-talks-settle-dispute-with-shareholder-ahead-planned-ipo-people-2026-10-11/))
- TIME profile: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/yang-zhilin/
- Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/most-influential-people-in-ai/yang-zhilin

- Began coding in high school and won first prize in Guangdong's informatics olympiad, which earned him direct admission to university. ([app001.ftchinese.com](http://app001.ftchinese.com/interactive/288418/en))
- Enrolled at Tsinghua in thermal engineering before switching to computer science, where he graduated top of his class in 2015. ([ai-speakers-agency.com](https://ai-speakers-agency.com/news/general-news/speaker-spotlight-yang-zhilin))
- Played drums in a Tsinghua campus band called Splay with future Moonshot co-founder Zhou Xinyu. ([thewirechina.com](https://www.thewirechina.com/2025/09/28/who-is-moonshot-ai/))
- Finished his Carnegie Mellon PhD in four years, and co-wrote the XLNet and Transformer-XL language model papers along the way. ([businessinsider.com](https://www.businessinsider.com/moonshot-ai-kimi-k3-founder-professor-on-unique-strengths-qualities-2026-7))
- Apple tried to recruit him after his PhD and he could have taken a postdoc at Stanford or MIT, but he went back to China to build a company. ([thewirechina.com](https://www.thewirechina.com/2025/09/28/who-is-moonshot-ai/))
- Goes by Kimi in English, and Moonshot's Kimi chatbot is named after him. ([thewirechina.com](https://www.thewirechina.com/2025/09/28/who-is-moonshot-ai/))