"Today I'm joined by Paul Gu, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Upstart. Paul's journey reads like a modern Silicon Valley story-from Chinese immigrant to Yale dropout, he became part of the inaugural class of Thiel Fellows before co-founding Upstart in 2012. Under his leadership, Upstart has gone from zero model training data points in 2013 to processing 91 million data points today. Their AI predicts both default and prepayment likelihood for every month of a loan's term."
"Way back in 2010, 2011-long time now-I dropped out of Yale to do the Thiel Fellowship. That was Peter Thiel's 20 Under 20 program. It was the first year of this program, and the basic deal was, you get $100,000 if you agree to drop out of college. It wasn't like YC or anything, no structured program. It was just a social experiment to see if you could get 19-year-olds to leave school, and then they could figure it out. And they did. It took a little while. I started thinking about this problem of young people getting access to money. And it occurred to me that unless you came from money, he wa"
AI-driven credit modeling is changing lending fundamentals by enabling simultaneous improvements in growth, credit performance, and profitability. Upstart scaled model training exposure from virtually zero in 2013 to processing 91 million data points, allowing monthly predictions of default and prepayment likelihood for each loan. The company aims to extend AI leadership and pursue GAAP profitability as part of a 2025 roadmap targeting tenfold AI advances. The approach applies across the consumer credit lifecycle and seeks to reshape underwriting, risk management, and lender economics within regulated environments.
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