Hi, I'm Wesley. I was born and raised near San Francisco, spent a few years in Oregon and Taiwan, then moved to Shanghai, where I went to an international high school. I've since moved back to San Francisco. My dad has spent his whole life building semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which shaped my passion for science and tech.
In late 2022 (pre-ChatGPT), a colleague and I started fine-tuning open-source AI image models for improved photorealism and identity preservation. That project became Aragon AI. After multiple pivots, we raised from NeoBusiness Insider and seed-strappedThe Information to profitability.
In two years, we became the world's most popular AI headshot company. We grew to 2.5M+ users and a $10M+ annual revenue run rateIndie Hackers with a team of just 10Business Insider. We later expanded into a broader AI image generation and editing platform used by the Fortune 500. I was CEO until my exit in mid-2026, when I sold my stake to work on my next thing.
Before starting Aragon, I was a founding engineer at two venture-backed startups and an engineer at Microsoft. I studied computer science and data science (math/statistics) at the University of Michigan, where I did applied AI research in healthcare, led its competitive machine learning teamMichigan CSE, and wrote a paper on paths from AGI to superintelligencePDF in 2017.
Outside of work, I like optimizing my health, spending time with friends and family, and doing hard things—I've finished a 140.6-mile (226 km) Ironman and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. I'm an avid tennis player and skier, and I've been to 30+ countries and 6 continents. I also appreciate the simple things: a home-cooked meal, a good book, a slow morning.
My paternal grandfather is a nationally known composer and conductor in China, and my maternal grandfather was Wang Xudong, one of China's leading landscape painters. I grew up playing the violin, though I spent most of my time reading and playing competitive sports and video games.
I'm an LP in Neo and an investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, and 15+ other startups. I'm a utilitarian and an optimist, sometimes irrationally so, and I prefer positive sum games over zero-sum ones.