Carina Letong Hong (born June 8, 2001) is a Chinese mathematician and technologist. She grew up in Guangdong before relocating to the United States and the United Kingdom for educational studies. She is the founder and CEO of Axiom, an advanced artificial intelligence company focused on solving the world's most complex mathematical problems.
Early Life and Education
Born and raised in Guangzhou to parents from Teoswa, Hong is one of only two people in her extended family who have had the opportunity to receive a college education.[1] As a child, Hong loved to compete in her province's mathematics Olympiad, where she was challenged to solve complex problems.[2] On the basis of her mathematical skill at a young age, Hong was invited to attend the Stanford University Mathematics Camp as a teenager, where she became fascinated with Legendre and Jacobi symbols, as well as handle decompositions.[2] She self-studied English so that she could learn from graduate textbooks in mathematics.[2]
For university studies, Hong moved to the United States attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[3] Double-majoring in mathematics and physics, Hong completed her studies in three years and graduated in 2022.[3] During that time, Hong published nine papers in peer-reviewed academic journals on topics including number theory, combinatorics, theoretical computer science, and probability.[2] She also took classes in advanced mathematics abroad through the Budapest Semester in Mathematics program. During her freshman year, Hong was also on the MIT Cheerleading team.[4] After attending MIT, Hong was selected for a Rhodes Scholarship and enrolled at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.[3] During her time at Oxford, Hong conducted research in deep learning at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre's Gatsby Computational Unit at University College London. She graduated with and MSc in Neuroscience in 2023, having written two dissertations with distinction.[5] Following her graduation from Oxford, Hong returned to the United States and enrolled in a dual-degree program at Stanford University to earn a PhD in mathematics and a JD from Stanford Law School.[6] She was selected as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar in 2024.[7]
During her academic career, Hong received numerous awards recognizing her exceptional work in mathematics. In 2021, she was awarded the Alice T. Schafer Prize by the Association for Women in Mathematics, which is annually awarded to a single undergraduate woman in the United States for excellence in mathematics.[8] In 2022, Hong was awarded the Mirzakhani Fellowship, an honor commemorating Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to ever be awarded the Fields Medal (2014).[7] That same year, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics jointly awarded Hong the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize, which is annually awarded to a single undergraduate student in the United States, Canada, or Mexico for mathematical excellence.[9][10] Awarded annually since 1995, Hong was only the fifth woman to ever be awarded the Morgan Prize.
During her academic career, her mentors have included Pavel Etingof,[8] Scott Sheffield,[8] Wei Zhang,[8] Gigliola Staffilani,[8] David Vogan,[8] Ken Ono,[8] and Joseph Gallian.[8]
Career
Hong put her academic studies at Stanford University on pause in 2025 after meeting Shubho Sengupta by chance at a coffee shop in Palo Alto, California. The pair struck up a conversation and discovered that they had a shared interest in applying recent developments in artificial intelligence to complex, unsolved theoretical math problems.[11][12] Together, they soon founded Axiom in Palo Alto, which Hong describes as an "AI mathematician" designed to tackle the most difficult unsolved problems on the frontiers of physics, advanced algorithms, and cryptography.[11][13][14] Within the year, Axiom's Lean-based artificial intelligence program, called AxiomProver, generated verified solutions to two unsolved Erdős problems.[15][11] AxiomProver also attained a perfect score on the Putnam Exam.[16]
Axiom, which has received more than $200 million of dollars in venture capital funding and was valued at $1.6 billion in March 2026,[16][14] has attracted top mathematical talent from both academia and industry. The small staff includes Meta AI and Google Brain alumni as well as academic talent, including Hong's Ken Ono, a longtime professor at the University of Virginia.[17]
In 2026, Hong was named to the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 for her work at Axiom.[18] She remains the founder and CEO of Axiom.
Comment: If Hong's major achievement is Axiom, then why an article about Hong and no article about Axiom? Meanwhile, here in the article about Hong is a claim made not about/for her but instead about/for "the Axiom team": 
- provide significant coverage: discuss the person in detail, not brief mentions or interviews lacking independent analysis;
- are reliable: from reputable outlets with editorial oversight;
- are independent: not connected to the person, such as interviews, press releases, the subject's own website, or sponsored content.
Please add references that meet all three of these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia.