Redwood City, CA, March 12, 2026 — Apodex today announced the appointment of three distinguished scientists to its leadership team, marking a pivotal milestone in the company’s mission to build Discoverable Intelligence — AI that makes predictions and explores new concepts rather than just analyzing existing knowledge. With the addition of Dr. Simon Shaolei DU as Lead Scientist for Reasoning Models & Training, Prof. Bo AN as Lead Scientist for Runtime & Agent Systems, and Dr. Kaiyu YANG as Lead Scientist of the Verifiable AI Lab, the three foundational pillars of Apodex’s Heavy Duty Solver engine are now fully in place.

Serial entrepreneur and philanthropist Tianqiao Chen founded Apodex with a bold vision to build a new generation of AI platforms for Discoverable Intelligence. Drawing on a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and investor in the United States, as well as his roots in China—where he founded one of the country’s first technology unicorns—Chen brings a uniquely global perspective to the company’s mission and the AI ecosystem. 

Apodex’s mission is not to build a more eloquent language model. It is to engineer a new class of AI systems capable of rigorous reasoning and solving hard, real-world problems — systems whose outputs are not merely plausible, but formally verifiable.

Dr. Simon Shaolei DU — Lead Scientist for Reasoning Models & Training

Dr. DU is currently an Associate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where his research spans machine learning theory, deep learning optimization, and the training of large-scale reasoning models. He brings to Apodex a rare combination of rigorous academic scholarship and hands-on industry experience at the frontier of AI development:

• Member of Technical Staff at xAI, where he contributed directly to cutting-edge large model research and development

• Visiting Professor at Facebook AI Research (FAIR)

• Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

At Apodex, Dr. DU will lead the end-to-end construction of the company’s core reasoning model training systems, encompassing model architecture design, large-scale training strategy, and systematic enhancement of reasoning capabilities. His work will serve as the primary intellectual engine powering Apodex’s Heavy Duty Solver.

Prof. Bo AN — Lead Scientist for Runtime & Agent Systems

Prof. AN is a tenured Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where he has built a distinguished research career at the intersection of multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, game theory, and AI-driven decision-making. His work has been published in premier international conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, and AAAI, and he has led multiple large-scale research programs while mentoring a generation of doctoral researchers. His contributions to the field have earned broad recognition from the global academic community.

Beyond his scholarly achievements, Prof. AN brings substantial experience in applied AI and technology transfer, having collaborated with leading technology enterprises and government agencies on projects spanning large-scale decision systems, autonomous coordination mechanisms, and AI-driven optimization. His track record of bridging foundational research with real-world engineering deployment positions him uniquely to accelerate Apodex’s research-to-product translation capabilities.

At Apodex, Prof. AN will lead the Runtime & Agent Systems technical division, overseeing the design and ongoing evolution of the system execution layer architecture. He will be responsible for the deep integration of reasoning models with the verification core, with the goal of building an overall system framework that is highly reliable, horizontally scalable, and fully auditable — strengthening Apodex’s core competencies in agent architecture, multi-agent coordination, and system-level reliability assurance.

Dr. Kaiyu YANG — Lead Scientist, Verifiable AI Lab

Dr. YANG joins Apodex from Meta Fundamental AI Research (FAIR), where he served as a Research Scientist. Prior to Meta, he conducted postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Dr. YANG has established himself as a leading researcher in verifiable reasoning and formal proof systems — disciplines that sit at the very heart of Apodex’s technical vision.

At Apodex, Dr. YANG will lead the establishment and full operation of the Verifiable AI Lab, focusing on two critical research thrusts: verifiable reasoning and verifiable generation. Applied to code synthesis, mathematical proof, and complex reasoning tasks, his team will drive a complete technical loop from research validation through systems engineering to product deployment — building next-generation AI foundations capable of delivering machine-checkable correctness guarantees and fundamentally ensuring the reliability and trustworthiness of AI outputs.

About Apodex:

Apodex is an AI research and technology company headquartered in Redwood City, CA, building the world’s first General Purpose Solver – a reasoning-first AI system engineered not merely to appear correct, but to be provably right. By pioneering verifiable, long-chain System 2 reasoning, Apodex delivers AI that is reliable and trusted for the highest-stakes problems spanning software engineering, financial services, healthcare and pharma, legal and compliance, and scientific research. Apodex was founded by Tianqiao Chen, backed by a team that is 80%+ PhD researchers and led by a world-class scientific leadership team across the globe. 

Media Contact: press@apodex.ai

Website：https://www.apodex.ai/

Github：https://github.com/ApodexAI

HuggingFace：https://huggingface.co/apodex

Apodex is hiring：talent@apodex.ai