This Bangladeshi-American teen joined SpaceX at 14; now resigning at 16

Kairan Quazi, the Bangladeshi-American prodigy who became SpaceX's youngest employee at the age of 14, is leaving the rocket company to join Citadel Securities, an American hedge fund and financial services company in New York.

Kairan Quazi will join Citadel Securities as a developer, according to media reports.

Quazi, now 16, confirmed the move in an interview with Business Insider, saying he felt ready "to take on new challenges and expand my skill set into a different high-performance environment." 

In that interview, Quazi said, "Quant finance offers a pretty rare combination: the complexity and intellectual challenge that AI research also provides, but with a much faster pace." 

"At Citadel Securities, I'll be able to see measurable impact in days, not months or years," he added.

Quazi's story first went viral back in 2023 when he joined SpaceX. At the time, he had just graduated from Santa Clara University's School of Engineering, becoming the institution's youngest graduate. During that time, in a post on LinkedIn, he described SpaceX as the "coolest company on the planet" and praised its decision to hire him without regard to his age.

According to the LA Times, born in California to Bangladeshi parents, Quazi displayed unusual abilities from an early age, speaking in full sentences at two. By nine, he found conventional schooling insufficiently challenging and soon began internships in artificial intelligence research, including a role at Intel Labs. 

At 11, Quazi formally began his university studies in computer science and engineering, and later contributed to projects at the cyber intelligence firm Blackbird.AI.