Pete Stevenson

Pete Stevenson
Occupation	Entrepreneur, software engineer
Known for	Co-founder and CEO of PAX Markets

Pete Stevenson is an American entrepreneur and technologist who is the founder and CEO of PAX Markets, a cryptocurrency centralized exchange (CEX) that integrates exchange matching and high-frequency trading (HFT) functionality onto a single chip. PAX Markets was part of the Y Combinator Winter 2025 batch.

Career

Stevenson has approximately 13 years of experience in fields including low-latency trading systems, cloud-native observability, and computer architecture. Prior to founding PAX Markets, he worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel, a major financial services firm. He was also a founding engineer at Pixie, where he contributed to the platform's performance profiler, Java test infrastructure, and core timing accuracy for its Kubernetes-native observability stack.

Stevenson founded PAX Markets to apply his background in low-latency systems and quantitative finance to cryptocurrency exchange infrastructure. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California. PAX Markets uses patented technology to combine exchange operations and high-frequency trading on a single silicon chip. The company's in-silicon architecture provides what it describes as deterministic nanosecond tick-to-trade latency through an on-chip API, referred to as the λ API.

The PAX Markets platform operates on a two-tier model. High-frequency traders access the exchange through the integrated on-chip λ API, which is designed to provide ultra-low-latency execution. Retail and other non-HFT traders can access the exchange through a separate legacy API that the company describes as zero-cost and always rebated. The company states that this structure provides "non-adverse counterparty selection" by pairing HFT participants with free-tier traders.

PAX Markets' broader business model involves building a new generation of exchange co-location facilities that unite high-frequency trading with exchange infrastructure on a single platform, monetizing through the vertical integration of exchange and platform technology.