Hyderabad Teenager Builds Global AI & Web3 Startups, Prepares to Attend UMass Amherst

Seventeen-year-old technologist and entrepreneur Aditya Hemanth Vellanki is set to begin his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst this fall. Known for his deep work in distributed systems, decentralized finance, and applied AI, Aditya represents a new generation of builders who bridge frontier technologies with scalable real-world impact.

Aditya’s journey began at the age of twelve, when he built a video-calling application that grew to users in more than 15 countries. By sixteen, he had launched ADHCoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency on the BNB blockchain that reached a market cap exceeding $200,000 — entirely self-bootstrapped and community-led.

He later founded ArthaNet, an AI-powered decentralized credit scoring system that leverages on-chain behavior and trust networks to create financial access for the unbanked. The project caught the attention of top-tier venture programs, earning Aditya recognition from top venture capitalists and being backed by EVM Capital. He is also a member of Network School, a global Network State based in Singapore-Johor SEZ built by tech and crypto evangelist Balaji Srinivasan.

More recently, Aditya served as the founding engineer at Exerton, a decentralized crowdfunding platform where he architected smart contract infrastructure and investor governance models. Exerton was built to democratize access to venture capital and empower early-stage builders to raise funding transparently on-chain.

Aditya was also an Innovator at The Knowledge Society, a global innovation program designed for ambitious teen innovators and young entrepreneurs with less than 10% acceptance rate, and adopted a Blockchain Focus. While at TKS, he worked with companies such as IKEA to build AI-powered solutions.

Today, Aditya is researching no-code infrastructure for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, an emerging standard in the AI ecosystem. It allows developers and researchers to deploy MCP servers in minutes, simplifying one of the most complex layers of agentic AI infrastructure.

Beyond his technical achievements, Aditya has been an active contributor to the Solana ecosystem, collaborating with projects like Jupiter, Zeta, and Superteam UAE, and participating in global research initiatives around DeFi, liquidity routing, and zero-knowledge proofs.

“I’m heading to UMass Amherst this fall not just to study computer science, but to grow as a person — to collaborate, to question assumptions, and to build the systems that will power the next generation of intelligence infrastructure,” Aditya said. “I believe the future of AI is agentic, interoperable, and decentralized — and I want to be at the center of that shift.