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Bangladeshi American Teen Prodigy Kairan Quazi Ditches SpaceX for Citadel Securities: Sixteen-year-old Bangladeshi American prodigy Kairan Quazi is making headlines again. After graduating from college, helping design SpaceX Starlink software, and rejecting offers from Silicon Valley’s top AI labs, Quazi has chosen a surprising path. He is joining Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities in New York as a quant developer, stepping away from Big Tech and diving into Wall Street.
From Child Genius to Wall Street Talent
Quazi’s journey has been extraordinary from the very beginning. At just 9, he left third grade to attend community college. By 10, he was interning at Intel Labs, and at 11, he transferred to Santa Clara University, where he became the youngest graduate in its 172-year history.
In 2023, at age 14, he was hired by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, where he contributed to the Starlink satellite program. At the time, he praised SpaceX for being one of the few companies that did not use his age as an “arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.”
Defying Conventional Systems
Quazi has often criticized traditional institutions. When Microsoft-owned LinkedIn banned him for being under 16, he blasted the decision as “illogical, primitive nonsense.” He also argued that the modern school system functions more like a “factory,” prioritizing prestige and fear over genuine learning.
“Age, privilege, and unconscious biases are used to gatekeep opportunities,” Quazi once wrote, invoking Stoic philosophers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to underscore his point.
Why He Chose Citadel Securities
Now, Quazi is turning down offers from top AI research labs to embrace the fast-paced world of quantitative finance.
“Quant finance offers a pretty rare combination: the complexity and intellectual challenge that AI research also provides, but with a much faster pace,” Quazi told Business Insider. At Citadel Securities, he said, he will see results from his work “in days, not months or years.”
For Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities, this is a significant win. The trading firm executes about 35% of all U.S. retail stock trades and generated nearly $10 billion in revenue in 2024. In its fierce competition with AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, recruiting Quazi is a symbolic and strategic victory.
Closing a Personal Loop
For Quazi, the move also feels personal. His mother worked in mergers and acquisitions as an investment banker, giving him early exposure to the finance world. On campus, he noticed how quant finance jobs were highly coveted among top math and computer science students.
By joining Citadel Securities, Quazi isn’t just building his career—he’s reshaping the narrative of what young talent can achieve outside Silicon Valley.
