Jefferson Chen studied computer science at Tsinghua University and graduated with first-class honors. There he founded a nonprofit, TECC, and later received the Fritz Redlich Alumni Award.
He went on to Stanford University for an MBA and co-founded its Chinese Entrepreneur Organization. He then worked as an investor in private markets before moving into fintech.
Advance Intelligence Group is based in Singapore and builds AI credit scoring and consumer instalment payments. Its consumer arm, Atome, offers buy now pay later services in Southeast Asia. The group was valued at about $400 million around 2019.
In 2023 it raised about $80 million at a valuation of about $2 billion, with investors including Warburg Pincus and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. In January 2024 Atome raised $31 million.