- Premium Content It takes our newsroom weeks - if not months - to investigate and produce stories for our premium content. You can’t find them anywhere else.
Lokesh Choudhary · · 11 min readRising AI entrepreneur admits to faking his Cambridge Ph.D.
Collin Furtado and Terence Lee also reported on this story.
Jon Lee, founder and CEO of Vizzio Technologies, has been busy putting Singapore on the global AI map.
Several years ago, the BBC interviewed Lee when he was still running a company in China and touted him as a “star player” and “the real deal.”
Image credit: Timmy Loen
In October 2023, Vizzio was the only Singapore-based firm featured in The Information’s 50 most promising startups list. Tech in Asia and other publications have also released positive interviews about the company.
Familiar industry names vouched for Vizzio, which aims to use AI and software to make 3D versions of anything from small objects to entire cities at affordable prices.
Its prominent investors include Singtel Innov8 and Sinovation Ventures. Kai-Fu Lee, a renowned AI scientist who serves as Sinovation’s chairman and CEO, had openly backed Vizzio and its founder in a since-deleted post on Linkedin and even became a board member of the startup that same year.
But by the end of 2023, just days after Tech in Asia published an article about Vizzio, we found out that Jon Lee was hiding secrets that gnawed at him and threatened to unravel the work that his company and staff have done.
He is in fact Dennis Lee, the former chief technology officer of Elipva, a Singapore-based software development startup established during the dot-com boom in the late 1990s.
He left the company after a probe by The Business Times (BT) over 20 years ago revealed that he had faked his credentials and awards.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Lee, who confirmed that his legal name is Lee Seng Fook, sought a fresh start and built businesses in China after his departure from Elipva. Eventually, he founded Vizzio in Singapore in 2019.
Tech in Asia has verified that the AI startup was making headway with what appears to be real customers and promising technology. Lee claimed that Vizzio’s revenue soared to US$18 million for the financial year (FY) ended in June 2023 from just US$2 million in the previous period. However, he did not send us Vizzio’s financial statement when asked.
The first fall at Elipva
Into the wilderness and back
“Dr. Jon Lee”
A counterfeit document
Deja vu
Stay ahead in Asia’s tech landscape
This is premium content. Subscribe to read the full story.
Dennis Lee, the CTO of dot-com startup Elipva infamous for falsifying his credentials, has resurfaced as Jon Lee, CEO of AI firm Vizzio.
We know this is not ideal. ⌛ Sign up in 20 seconds. Cancel anytime.
Our subscriber community includes professionals from these companies:
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
