Joshua Xu

Joshua Xu is the Co-Founder and CEO of HeyGen, a generative AI company focused on transforming visual storytelling. He co-founded the company in November 2020 and has been leading its growth in Los Angeles, California. 

HeyGen develops AI-powered tools that allow users to create video content without traditional cameras, aiming to reduce production costs and make content creation more accessible. The company actively researches and applies generative adversarial networks (GANs), diffusion models, and other deep learning techniques to achieve this goal.
 

Before founding HeyGen, Joshua worked at Snapchat Inc. from September 2014 to November 2020. He was one of the early engineers in the Monetisation team and led efforts in Ads Ranking. His work at Snapchat involved building advertising infrastructure, pacing systems, data pipelines, optimisation tools, and recommendation engines. He also contributed to computational photography and developed Barista, Snapchat’s internal machine learning platform. His technical expertise was central to developing the camera experience and AI capabilities within the company.
 

Joshua holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, specifically from the Robotics Institute at the School of Computer Science. He completed his undergraduate education in Electrical Engineering at Tongji University in China. His academic background includes research on topics such as electromagnetic scattering and brain-computer interface systems, with papers presented at IEEE and neural information processing conferences.

Joshua Xu was born in China and later pursued his education in engineering and computer science. He began his academic journey at Tongji University, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. During his undergraduate years, he gained a strong foundation in systems and applied sciences, which led him to further explore the fields of computing and robotics.
 

Following his graduation from Tongji University, Joshua moved to the United States to pursue his postgraduate studies. He enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a Master’s degree in Computer Science. He was part of the university's Robotics Institute within the School of Computer Science, which is known for its research and development in AI and automation. While studying, Joshua contributed to academic research and co-authored two technical publications. 


In 2012, he presented a paper on a low-delayed asynchronous wheelchair control system using brain-computer interface technology at the 19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing. In 2013, he presented another paper titled “Efficient Nystrom Solutions for Electromagnetic Scattering by Thin Conducting Structures” at the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation.
 

After completing his postgraduate studies, Joshua joined Snap Inc. in 2014 as a software engineer. He became the third engineer in the company’s monetisation team and the first engineer in ads ranking. Over the next six years, Joshua played an important role in the development of Snapchat’s advertising technology. He worked on infrastructure, pacing systems, optimisation algorithms, data integration, ranking engines, and recommendation systems. He also contributed to the development of Snap’s machine learning platform called Barista and worked on camera experiences and computational photography features for the application.
 

In November 2020, Joshua co-founded HeyGen, an AI company based in Los Angeles. As CEO, he led the company’s efforts to reinvent visual storytelling through generative AI technology. The vision behind HeyGen was to reduce the cost of content creation by replacing traditional camera-based video production with AI-generated visual media. 


Under his leadership, the company invested in computer vision technologies, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and diffusion models. The platform aims to make video creation more accessible and scalable by automating the “making” process while allowing users to focus on creativity.
 

Joshua continues to lead HeyGen as CEO and is actively involved in advancing AI research and development for content creation. He oversees product development, engineering teams, and strategic direction. His current work is focused on building tools that allow individuals and organisations to generate high-quality visual content with minimal technical knowledge or production resources.
 

As of 2025, Joshua is based in Los Angeles and remains a central figure in the field of generative AI. He is also involved in growing his team and expanding the reach of HeyGen globally. His career reflects a consistent focus on building scalable systems at the intersection of artificial intelligence, visual communication, and machine learning.

Joshua Xu’s vision is to change how people create visual content by using artificial intelligence. He believes that creating videos should not depend on expensive cameras or complex tools. Instead, with the help of AI, anyone should be able to produce high-quality videos easily. At HeyGen, he is working to make the process of video creation simple and affordable for everyone. His goal is to remove the barriers to visual storytelling so that creativity is not limited by resources. He wants to build AI systems that support people in telling their stories in a faster and more efficient way.

Joshua Xu works at Snap Inc. and contributed to major advancements in advertising technology and machine learning platforms. As the co-founder of HeyGen, Joshua has been noted for building one of the leading companies in the AI video generation space. His research contributions during his academic years, presented at international conferences such as IEEE and ICNIP, also reflect his early achievements.