Zheyun “Zion” Zhang

Zion Zhang's first startup taught him an expensive lesson: it collapsed not over code, but over a hard conversation he avoided with his co-founder. "Small gaps in human relationships," he realized, "compound and break over time." That insight became an obsession — and a company. Humanest, the venture he's building now, is an AI "relationship layer" that engineers serendipity: today it remembers your conversations, drafts follow-ups, scans social media for opportunities, and surfaces introductions. The vision is to collapse six degrees of separation into one. Along the way Zion has built his own AI wearables (and had the maturity to kill the hardware when users wanted software), judged Cal Hacks — the world's largest collegiate hackathon — twice, been featured in the Seattle Times, and hosted a 200-person Friendsgiving for strangers after reading that half of Seattleites would spend the holiday alone. Now at USC for cognitive science, he's a founder who believes human connection is the most important technology of all.