Relia ↗
A hosted API that scores how relevant a news article actually is to a company — not just whether it's mentioned.
- Relia-1 · LoRA Qwen3-Embedding bi-encoder
- 86.5% agreement with frontier LLM raters
- ~18ms / article
// designer-engineer · founder · based in london
Jamie Zhao
I build the models, the pipeline, and the product behind Aleta Index — the data infrastructure that turns the world's news into credible, structured signal for AI agents and decision-makers.
- role
- co-founder · cto + cpo
- focus
- narrative intelligence · applied ml
- now
- building aleta index · applying to yc
01 — About
Trained in design, obsessed with building.
Xiaoqin “Jamie” Zhao. I trained across the Royal College of Art (MA, Innovation Design Engineering) and Imperial College London (MSc, Design Engineering — with a Machine Learning elective), after a Bachelor of Business.
That mix is the point: I sit where ML, product, and design meet. At Aleta Index I lead everything from LoRA fine-tuning and data pipelines to information architecture and the product people actually touch.
I think best in motion — most of my hardest problems get solved on a long bike ride, not at a desk.
- Based London, UK
- Focus Narrative intelligence · Fintech · Applied ML
- Now Building Aleta Index · applying to YC
02 — What I'm building
Aleta Index
A narrative intelligence company. We track how claims spread across the world's news and score which sources are actually credible — turning noise into structured signal you can trust.
Fin-Narratives ↗
Gives an AI agent a financial narrative brain: clusters news into narratives, tracks sentiment momentum, maps narrative risk.
- 109 US equity tickers
- MCP server + REST API
- Real-time, thousands of sources
Narrative Platform ↗
The live news-narrative-intelligence product — powered by a Claim DAG and an RL-based source credibility engine. Owned end to end, architecture to launch.
- Shipped & live
- Credibility-first
- aletaindex-narrative.com
03 — Experience
Where I've worked.
-
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder
Jul 2024 — PresentAleta Index · London
Led product architecture, prototyping and full-stack build of the Narrative Intelligence Platform (B2B API + MCP server). Built the end-to-end data pipeline — LoRA embedding fine-tuning on financial corpora (PyTorch Lightning, GCP), narrative modelling, and a source-credibility engine (Claim DAG + RL scoring). Direct the technical team across every workstream.
-
Skill Lead — User Research
Dec 2022 — May 2023Hercules Cambridge Design Studio · London
Directed research-driven design with multidisciplinary student teams. Led end-to-end behavioural research for Sightsavers (UK NGO) on how younger donors evaluate trust and impact in digital giving.
-
Product Designer — DeFi Trading Systems
Feb 2022 — Jun 2022ARPA-Cell Protocol (listed on Coinbase & Binance) · Remote
Designed grid-trading system architecture and market-maker mechanics. Analysed on-chain user behaviour to cut friction in transaction flows and shorten decision paths.
-
Ecommerce Data Analyst
Oct 2020 — Mar 2021JD.com (Jingdong) · Beijing
Modelled GMV and retention dynamics, turning transactional data into category-level strategy and decision-oriented insight for non-technical stakeholders.
04 — Education
Trained to design and to build.
2023 — 2024
Imperial College London
MSc, Design Engineering — elective: Machine Learning
2022 — 2023
Royal College of Art
MA, Innovation Design Engineering
2020 — 2022
Torrens University Australia
Bachelor of Business
05 — Recognition
Awards & recognition.
- 2025Innovate UK — Frontier AIAwarded £50,000
- 2025SFF FinTech Excellence AwardsShortlisted — Emerging Company
- 2024DIA 2024Honourable Mention
- 2024UKRI AISC Accelerator ProgrammeAwarded £20,000
- 2023Grand Challenge 2023Shortlisted — TIDAL TAPE (with RNLI)
06 — Toolkit
How I work.
ML & AI
Engineering & Infra
Product & Research
07 — Contact
Let's talk.
Building something at the intersection of markets, AI and design — or just want to compare notes? I'd love to hear from you.