# Jiang Daxin

> Jiang Daxin (姜大昕) is the co-founder and CEO of StepFun, a Chinese AI company founded in 2023. A former Microsoft vice president and research leader, he helped develop language technologies for products including Bing, Cortana and Azure before assembling a team to build large, multimodal models. His public interviews trace a shift from quiet model training to open releases and applications on devices.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at StepFun
- **Organizations:** StepFun, Microsoft, Microsoft Research Asia
- **Nationality:** Chinese
- **Education:** Bachelor’s degree, University of Science and Technology of China, PhD in computer science, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
- **Known for:** Worked on natural language technology used in Bing, Cortana, Azure and Microsoft 365 at Microsoft., Co-founded StepFun and led its language and multimodal model program., Named an ACM Distinguished Member in 2025.

## Career timeline

- **2007** — Joined Microsoft Research Asia as a researcher.
- **2017** — Became a Microsoft global partner and served as deputy dean and chief scientist of its Asia internet engineering organization.
- **2023** — Became a Microsoft corporate vice president, then left to co-found StepFun.
- **2023-07** — StepFun began training its first large language model, Step-1.
- **2024-03** — Presented a Step-2 preview after a comparatively quiet first year.
- **2025-07** — Introduced Step 3 and a model and chip ecosystem alliance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
- **2026-02** — StepFun released the open Step 3.5 Flash model.

## Achievements

- Worked on natural language technology used in Bing, Cortana, Azure and Microsoft 365 at Microsoft.
- Co-founded StepFun and led its language and multimodal model program.
- Named an ACM Distinguished Member in 2025.
- Co-authored StepFun technical papers including its Step 3.5 Flash report.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — StepFun released Step 3.5 Flash as an open foundation model aimed at reasoning and agent tasks.
- **2026-01** — StepFun named Yin Qi chairman and announced a 5 billion yuan Series B+ round; Jiang remained CEO.
- **2025-07** — Jiang presented Step 3 and discussed model deployment across Chinese chips.
- **2025-01** — The University of Science and Technology of China reported his selection as a 2025 ACM Distinguished Member.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://cn.linkedin.com/in/daxin-jiang-00006124

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jiang-daxin
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29