Propose an edit: Axiom founders

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

[[axiom]], the trading terminal that came to dominate [[Solana]] meme coin execution, was founded in 2024 by Henry Zhang, known in crypto as Mist, and Preston Ellis, known as Cal. Both were 22 year old recent graduates when they started the company, and within two years they had built the most financially successful startup in Y Combinator's history by speed of revenue, then weathered one of the era's ugliest data scandals.

## Backgrounds

Ellis studied electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and sold a startup while still an undergraduate. Zhang worked at TikTok on generative AI for advertising and had built two startups, one of which was acquired. The two entered Axiom into Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch, taking a $500,000 check from the accelerator, an almost comically small raise for what followed.

## The terminal

Axiom's pitch was a single platform to trade any asset on any chain, launching with Solana meme coins, Hyperliquid perpetuals and yield. Its edge was execution speed and a clean interface at the moment [[pump fun]] flow was migrating from Telegram bots to web terminals. Growth was vertical: Blockworks profiled the YC meme coin bet making $10 million a week, and The Block reported the company crossed $100 million in cumulative revenue within roughly five months of launch, faster than any YC company before it, including Cursor. Forbes later reported the terminal went from 2 percent to 72 percent market share in under a year, making Axiom the venue where much of [[the trenches]] actually clicked buy. In January 2026 Forbes itself partnered with the company to launch ForbesPredict, a prediction platform built on Axiom infrastructure.

## The surveillance scandal

In February 2026 Forbes published an investigation, prompted by findings from the onchain researcher ZachXBT, reporting that a senior Axiom employee had used internal dashboards to surveil private wallet data of hundreds of thousands of users with no oversight, citing screenshots from April and August 2025. The reporting characterized the data misuse as confirmed while stressing that accompanying insider trading suspicions were alleged and unproven. The episode reignited a debate the trenches already knew from the Axiom era's rivals: terminals see everything their users do, and the only guarantee of restraint is the team's own discipline. Zhang and Ellis continued to run the company as of the report.

## References

- https://www.theblock.co/post/355676/axiom-exchange-hits-100-million-in-revenue-just-four-months-after-launch
- https://blockworks.com/news/axiom-ycombinator-startup-solana-memecoin-revenue-10m
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2026/02/26/axiom-became-ycs-biggest-hit-then-someone-was-watching/
- https://www.coingecko.com/learn/what-is-axiom-exchange
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/pr/2026/01/23/forbes-partners-with-axiom-to-launch-forbespredict-a-first-of-its-kind-prediction-platform-built-for-media/
- https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/axiom

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