The teenage prodigy of Elon Musk, Kairan Quazi, abandons SpaceX for the citadel of billionaire Ken Griffin

A provocative attitude

The Quazi path was not conventional from the start. At 9 years old, he left the third year for Community College, continued an intern at Intel Labs at 10 and was transferred to the University of Santa Clara at 11, finally becoming the youngest graduate of his 172 years of history.

In 2023, he made the headlines when Elon Musk SpaceX hired him at only 14 years old, a “rare enterprise”, said Quazi at the time, which did not use his age as “arbitrary and obsolete proxy for maturity and capacity”.

The same year, he argued with Linkedin, belonging to Microsoft, after having dismissed him from the platform to be under 16, denouncing the decision of “Illogical and primitive nonsense”. In fact, Quazi never hesitated to criticize the traditional system that held him. Once LinkedIn has enabled it to return to their platform, Quazi published a comment snapping the conventional school system. The 16 -year -old argued that “tests are not used to measure mastery, but the capacity to regurgitate” and that “the school factory” modern rewards fear and the pursuit of prestige on learning.

“The age, the privilege and the unconscious biases (sometimes even aware) are used for delicious opportunities,” he wrote, adding that philosophers like Seneca the younger and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius could have considered today’s education system.

Two years later, Quazi channeled this same challenge in a different arena. He rejected the offers of the main startups and technological companies to join the titles of Citadel this week in New York, citing the culture of meritocracy and the instant comments of the company.

“As for finance offers a fairly rare combination: the complexity and the intellectual challenge that AI research also provides, but with a much faster rate,” he said Business Insider. At Citadel Securities, he said, he will be able to see the results of his work in “days, not months or years”.

A winner

Citadel Securities – The sister society of the famous citadel – for its part, has every reason to deceive victory. The company, which manages approximately 35% of American retail operations and generated nearly $ 10 billion in revenues in 2024, is locked in a talent war with Openai, Anthropic and Xai. Recruiting a prodigy which was once deemed too young for LinkedIn – but now works at the intersection of engineering and the quantitative problem of problems – is a symbolic coup for the commercial power of Ken Griffin.

For Quazi, the move also closes a personal loop. His mother worked in mergers and acquisitions as an investment banker, giving him early exhibition to finance. And on campus, he saw how coveted quantitative jobs had become for students in mathematics and computer science.

“This is one of the most prestigious industries you can go as an informatian or mathematician,” he said Initiate of Business.

Now he lives this reality in New York. Quazi moved into an apartment just a 10 -minute walk from the office of avenue Park avenue de Citadel Securities.

“New York has a very special place in my heart,” he said, noting that his mother grew up in Astoria, Queens.

Unlike his stay in Spacex, where his mother had to drive him to work in Redmond, Washington, the journey of Quazi is now his: first on foot, and soon, by metro.

“I felt ready to take up new challenges and extend my skills to a different high performance environment,” he said. “Citadel Securities offered an equally ambitious culture, but also a completely new area, which is very exciting for me.”

Jackie Scharnick, Citadel communications director, said Quazi would transmit an interview with Fortune He could therefore “focus on his second day of work”.