Hey, I'm Wesley! 👋🏻

Wesley Tian

I’m the Co-Founder and CEO of Aragon AI. We're building the visual identity layer of the internet.

Our proprietary AI generates ultra-realistic photos of people that are indistinguishable from real ones. We started by building the world’s most popular AI headshot generator (2M+ users) and have since expanded into enterprise solutions for Fortune 500s and a growing platform of AI products spanning photo editing, photo generation, and digital identity.

Since launching in 2023, we've scaled Aragon to over 8-figure annual run rate and profitability with a 12-person team of ex-founders, AI researchers, International Math Olympiad medalists, and alumni from MIT, Meta, Google, and Brex.

Aragon's investors include Neo, Sequoia Scout, and the founders of billion-dollar companies like Vanta and Decagon.

I'm also an active investor in over a dozen companies and VC funds, including Neo, OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, and Sesame.

Before starting Aragon, I was a founding engineer at two Y Combinator-backed startups, a software engineer at Microsoft, an machine learning engineer at Clinc AI, and an AI researcher at the University of Michigan.

Mountaineering & Triathlons

🏔️ I enjoy climbing mountains. Here are a few notable experiences (click to expand):
    Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,341 ft / 5,895 m)

    In January 2025, I organized 3 friends to climb the tallest mountain in Africa. It took us 5 days to summit and 2 days to descend. One of us was unable to summit due to altitude sickness which caused debilitating headaches, diarrhea, nausea, and extreme fatigue among us. At that extreme elevation, only ~50% of the oxygen at sea level was available to us.

    Early in the climb, I got severe food poisoning. At one point, even water made me have explosive diarrhea. Despite that, I still had to hike through blistering sun, rain, sleet, stinging hail, and snow. Summit day started at 10 p.m., and we ended up hiking 17 hours that day. This was the most physical suffering I've ever endured–even more than my Ironman.

    Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft / 4,421 m)

    In 2019, I organized three friends to climb the tallest mountain in the contiguous US. We started the climb at 2 am, and it took us 17 hours to summit and descend. People usually split this climb into two days. We ran out of water near the summit, so one of us had to drink piss to survive (we filtered it).

    Mt. Fuji (12,389 ft / 3,776 m)

    In 2015, I organized 3 friends to "bullet climb" the tallest mountain in Japan, which means to summit and descend in a single push without staying overnight on the mountain. It took us 14 hours total. It’s now forbidden to bullet climb Mt. Fuji because too many people have been injured from attempting it. My friends stopped hiking after this experience because of how challenging it was.

I've wanted to climb the Seven Summits (the highest mountain on each continent, including Mt. Everest) ever since I was a kid. I’ve conquered one so far and have six more to go.

🚴🏻 In 2021, I trained for and completed an Ironman Triathlon–a 140.6-mile (226 km) endurance race consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile marathon, all done back-to-back, in Cozumel, Mexico, where it was 80°F (27°C) with 100% humidity.

Right after I crossed the finish line, I collapsed from hyponatremia and had to be carried away on a stretcher. For the first time in my life, I was scared that I had irreversibly fucked up my body–my entire body was cramping, including my face, and I couldn't even open my fists. The race took me 15 hours to finish and it was the hardest physical thing I've ever done.

💪🏻 I've also trained to do a muscle-up, land a standing backflip, and bench press two plates (225 lbs / 102 kg).

Fun facts:

  • I've moved around a lot growing up. I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, Oregon, Taiwan, Shanghai, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Nevada.
  • I have a cameo in a Netflix documentary called Don't Die.
  • I've visited 28 countries and 6 continents.

    • High school was formative for me:
  • When I was 15, I attended a military camp in Kentucky. They shaved our heads as soon as we arrived, none of the bathroom stalls had doors, they made a guy run until he puked because he took too long to finish eating, I ate some ants, we had to wake up every morning at 4:30 a.m. to do physical training (PT), and more. The camp shut down soon after I left due to safety concerns and lawsuits filed against them.
  • I was the worst League of Legends player in my grade and I wanted to be the best, so I put over a thousand hours into the game and eventually made it to semi-pro.
  • I had a 1.9/4.0 GPA (C- average) during my junior year and I graduated at the bottom of my class. Blog Post
  • I competed on 6 sports teams–track, cross country, tennis, table tennis, swimming, and basketball.

If you’d like to chat, you can reach me at my first name at my company url. You can also find me on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading,

Wesley Tian