Amber Group’s co-founder Tiantian Kullander, also known as “TT,” unexpectedly passed away in his sleep on Nov. 23, according to the company’s official website. Kullander was 30 years old and leaves behind a wife and a son.

Besides co-founding the Hong Kong-based Amber Group, TT sat on the board of esports company Fnatic and founded KeeperDAO, a decentralized finance protocol that allows participants to trade, borrow and stake assets with protection from minervalue-extracted bots, before returning it to the community.

In an official statement, Amber Group noted that TT had devoted his heart and soul to the company, leading by example with “his intellect, generosity, humility, diligence and creativity.” The company also stated:

“TT was a respected thought leader and widely recognized as a pioneer for the industry. His depth of knowledge, his willingness to collaborate and his desire to always help others benefited countless start-ups and individuals. His insights and creativity inspired many projects, people and communities.”

Aiming to explore machine learning for trading, Amber Group started in 2015 as a side project of four traders — Kullander, Michael Wu, Wayne Huo and Tony He — as well as Bloomberg LP developer Thomas Zhu. They began working on the project full time in 2017. 

Prior to this, Kullander worked in structured credit trading at Goldman Sachs and as an emerging markets trader at Morgan Stanley. In 2019, he was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which recognizes ​​the brightest young entrepreneurs, leaders and stars.

The community reacted to the loss on Twitter. Arthur Cheong, founding partner of DeFiance Capital, noted that the “industry lost a young, bright and most importantly, a good soul.”

Tom C., co-founder of the automatic market maker Charm Finance, also noted on Twitter that TT was “one of the most genuine, and most talented person” he knew.