Simon Song

Simon Song (Yachen Song) is the founder and CEO of Tripo AI (registered as VAST), a company building large-scale, general-purpose 3D foundation models. Born in 1997 in Hangzhou, he studied philosophy and Middle East politics at Johns Hopkins, worked in the CEO's office at SenseTime, and co-founded the Chinese AI unicorn MiniMax before starting VAST in 2023 shortly after Google's DreamFusion showed text-to-3D was possible. A self-described gamer and anime fan, Song wants to let anyone create 3D content with zero barriers and zero cost, and has grown Tripo Studio past 6.5 million users with clients including Tencent, Sony, Microsoft and Pop Mart.