Hyperliquid co-founder says crypto is losing top founders to AI hype
Jeff Yan says AI’s boom and prestige are pulling young builders from crypto, even as onchain finance offers a chance to redesign market structure and financial infrastructure.
Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan said the digital-asset sector is struggling to attract enough top entrepreneurs as artificial intelligence draws ambitious young founders with faster momentum and greater prestige. Speaking on the VALR podcast, Yan argued that rebuilding finance from first principles gives entrepreneurs a chance to solve difficult real-world problems by turning academic ideas into market designs that can work reliably at scale. He said prospective founders should judge sectors by the problems they are trying to solve rather than by surface appeal, and pointed to onchain finance as an area where new financial systems and market structures can be built. The backdrop is a broader AI boom that is pulling in talent and capital, as former White House crypto czar David Sacks warned that Chinese model advances such as Kimi K3’s rise to the top of the Frontend Code Arena highlight competitive pressure on U.S. developers. Former Fidelity fund manager George Noble separately warned that heavy AI infrastructure spending could create wider financial risks if expected returns fail to materialize.
- onchain finance: Financial systems and services built directly on blockchain networks.
- market structure: The design and rules that shape how financial markets operate and how participants trade.
- AI infrastructure: The data centers, chips and other computing systems needed to build and run artificial intelligence models.