Axiom Trade founder, CEO, team and company facts

If you are searching for the Axiom Trade founder, the names are Henry Zhang and Preston Ellis. Zhang is the CEO, Ellis is the CTO, and together they run Axiom Innovations Inc., the company behind axiom.trade. This page gathers everything public about the company: the people, the legal entity, the headquarters question, team size, release dates, revenue by date, funding, jobs and the two unrelated businesses that share the name.

Our Axiom Trade explained page explains the product itself. Here we stick to the company, and we mark what is confirmed and what is not.

Who is the Axiom Trade founder?

Axiom has two founders: Henry Zhang, Founder and CEO, and Preston Ellis, Founder and CTO, as listed on the company's Y Combinator profile. Zhang previously worked on generative-AI advertising at TikTok. Ellis is a former DoorDash intern. In crypto circles they go by the aliases "Mist" and "Cal".

The Block profiled them in May 2025 as 22-year-olds. On education, sources disagree: The Block describes both as UC San Diego graduates, while Ellis's YC bio mentions EECS at UC Berkeley. We treat where they studied as unverified and do not repeat either version as fact. Beyond these two profiles, neither founder has a widely published biography.

Who owns Axiom Trade, and who is the CEO?

Henry Zhang is the CEO and Preston Ellis is the CTO. The legal owner of the platform is Axiom Innovations Inc., the company named in the Terms of Service, which are governed by California law with mandatory arbitration. Axiom is private and publishes no cap table, so the split between the founders and Y Combinator, the only confirmed outside investor, is not public.

Axiom's Contact page lists an investor-relations route labeled "Email Founders" that goes to support@axiom.trading. Treat any other address claiming to reach the founders with suspicion; the Axiom Trade official website page lists every channel we could confirm.

Where is Axiom Trade headquartered, and how big is the team?

Two cities appear in the sources, and we cannot say which is current. Y Combinator lists Axiom in Austin, Texas, and the company's LinkedIn page gives an Austin address with the 78701 zip code. A Pitchbook snippet for "Axiom Innovations (California)", founded 2024, gives San Francisco. The Terms are governed by California law, which fits either reading. Unrelated companies called Axiom Innovations Inc. exist in Toronto and in Coral Springs, Florida.

Team size is just as unsettled. YC's page still lists two people. LinkedIn shows 42 people associated with the company, a self-selected size bracket of 2 to 10 and 9,081 followers when we checked. LinkedIn counts include former staff, contractors and people who simply claim an affiliation, so 42 is a ceiling, not a headcount. The YC jobs page, covered below, shows Axiom hiring engineers at senior salaries, which does not fit a two-person company either.

When was Axiom Trade released?

Axiom opened early access in late January 2025 and launched publicly in mid-February 2025, according to The Block. DefiLlama's fee data for the protocol begins on January 19, 2025, which lines up with the early-access date. YC lists the company as founded in 2024, and it went through the Winter 2025 batch, so the product launched during the batch itself. The timeline below puts the launch, the reported revenue milestones and the February 2026 incident in order.

Axiom Trade revenue: what is self-reported and what is measured

Axiom's revenue comes from per-trade fees, and the public numbers fall into two groups. Measured figures come from The Block, DefiLlama and newsletters that read on-chain fee flows. Self-reported figures come from Axiom's own Y Combinator pages.

• Measured. $100 million in fees about four months after launch (The Block, May 25, 2025); $200 million in 202 days (Step Data newsletter, August 4, 2025, a third-party figure); more than $390 million in revenue to date (The Block, February 26, 2026); $783.9 million in all-time fees and $485.5 million in all-time revenue after cashback and referral payouts (DefiLlama public API, September 17, 2026).
• Self-reported. "$10M MRR and $5M monthly net profit" on the undated YC company page, and "mid 8 figure ARR annualized" on the YC jobs page.

The two groups fit together: $10 million a month is "mid 8 figures" a year, and DefiLlama's $24.7 million of revenue in the 30 days to September 17, 2026 sits above the YC figure, which may simply be older. The full table, and the fees-versus-revenue distinction, is in our Axiom Trade platform overview. The money comes from the Axiom Trade fees.

Funding, valuation and Y Combinator

Y Combinator is the only confirmed investor. Axiom is a YC Winter 2025 company, and a Substack analysis argues YC is the only outside capital it has taken. A search snippet mentions "$500K over 1 round, Seed 2025", which looks like YC's standard deal rather than a separate round; we could not verify it. Funding trackers showing $41.4 million or a $200 million Series A for "Axiom" describe axiom.xyz and Axiom Quant, not the trading platform.

No priced round and no valuation have been published. Any valuation you see quoted online is somebody's estimate, and we do not repeat estimates, including for the founders' net worth. Axiom also has no token, so there is no market-implied figure either; our Axiom price page explains what the AXIOM coins on price trackers actually are.

Axiom Trade careers and jobs

Axiom's open roles are listed on its Y Combinator jobs page. When we checked, it listed six engineering positions, all in Austin: Systems Engineer, Frontend Engineer, Backend Engineer, Full Stack Engineer and Rust Engineer at $320,000 to $465,000, and a Founding Engineer at $150,000 to $500,000 with 0.5% to 1.5% equity. The page says new graduates are accepted and describes the business as "mid 8 figure ARR annualized".

The address axiom.trade/careers could not be fetched when we checked, so we cannot confirm whether a careers page exists on the main site. Apply through the YC page or a link from axiom.trade itself. A recruiter who DMs you about an "Axiom" job that requires a deposit, a test trade or your wallet details is running a scam.

The February 2026 staff allegations

On February 26, 2026, the investigator ZachXBT alleged that a New York-based senior business-development employee had used Axiom's internal support tools to look up users' wallets and had discussed profiting from the information. Axiom said it was "shocked and disappointed", removed access to the tools and promised to continue investigating. The outcome of that investigation is unverified. Our Axiom Trade reviews covers what it means for users, and the Axiom Trade terms of service explainer covers the Terms and Privacy Policy re-dated the same day.

Not the same company: other businesses called Axiom Trade

Two unrelated companies share the name and show up in searches for the founder or owner. "Axiom Trade, Inc." in San Juan, Puerto Rico is a licensed US customs broker founded in 2004, with a president named Paulette Diaz and a Better Business Bureau listing; its Instagram handle is @axiomtradeinc. "Axiom Trade Links Pvt Ltd" in Jaipur, India is a natural-stone manufacturer and exporter incorporated in 1996 by Bharat and Charul Gupta. Neither has anything to do with axiom.trade, and none of those people is an Axiom Trade founder.

Other Axioms that muddle searches include axiom.xyz (zero-knowledge software), axiom.co (a logging company) and Axiom Space. If what you actually want to know is whether the platform is open where you live, our Axiom Trade restricted countries page covers what the Terms say.

Sources: Y Combinator: Axiom, Y Combinator: Axiom jobs, The Block (May 2025), The Block (February 2026), DefiLlama: Axiom Pro, Axiom Terms and Contact page as read on September 17, 2026, LinkedIn company page, Pitchbook and BBB search snippets. Checked October 2, 2026.