# Edward Tian

> Edward Tian is the co-founder and CEO of GPTZero, the AI-detection tool he wrote in three days at a cafe over the 2023 New Year holiday while a senior at Princeton. Within days, tens of thousands of teachers swarmed the app and crashed its server. Two years on, GPTZero has raised $13.5 million, reached millions of users, turned profitable, and become a default check for educators, recruiters, and grant agencies trying to tell human writing from machine writing.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at GPTZero
- **Organizations:** GPTZero, Princeton University, Microsoft AI, BBC, Andela
- **From:** Etobicoke, Toronto, Canada
- **Nationality:** Canadian
- **Education:** B.S.E., Computer Science (with journalism), Princeton University
- **Known for:** Built GPTZero, one of the most widely used AI-detection tools, in three days, Forbes 30 Under 30 (Toronto) with co-founder Alex Cui, Raised $13.5M total, including a $10M Series A in 2024

## Career timeline

- **2019** — Began studying computer science, NLP, and journalism at Princeton University
- **2021** — Worked on detecting GPT-3 text in Princeton's Natural Language Processing Lab; interned at Microsoft AI on synthetic data research and at the BBC as an investigative journalist
- **2022** — Launched an early version of GPTZero as a Streamlit web app in December; 30,000 users crashed it almost instantly
- **2023** — Wrote and released GPTZero over the New Year holiday; raised $3.5M seed; named Forbes 30 Under 30 (Toronto) with co-founder Alex Cui
- **2024** — Raised $10M Series A led by Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi; reached millions of users and profitability; launched authorship tracking software

## Achievements

- Built GPTZero, one of the most widely used AI-detection tools, in three days
- Forbes 30 Under 30 (Toronto) with co-founder Alex Cui
- Raised $13.5M total, including a $10M Series A in 2024
- Grew GPTZero to millions of users and profitability within 18 months
- Backed by journalism leaders Mark Thompson (NYT/BBC/CNN) and Tom Glocer (Reuters)
- Reported 500% ARR growth in the second half of 2024

## Latest updates

- **2024-06** — Raised a $10M Series A led by Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi, with profitability and millions of users.
- **2024-09** — Announced authorship tracking software to move beyond an all-or-nothing view of AI writing.

## Links

- Website: https://gptzero.me
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-tian-b07329ab
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/edward_the6
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/gptzero

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/edward-tian
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-04