[11] Founded in 2020, SOFR Academy was established by Marcus A. Burnett,[12] a former interest rate trader and capital markets consultant who began his career at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).

The firm initially focused on economic education in connection with reference rate reform, and in 2021, expanded their concentration in response to a request by ten U.S. regional banks for the development of a credit spread supplement for SOFR.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Haoxiang Zhu is a former advisor of the firm and stepped down in November 2021 prior to being appointed as the Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Division of Trading and Markets.

SOFR Academy is backed by leading Austin-based venture firm 8VC,[15] led by Palantir Technologies founder Joe Lonsdale, as well as people such as Robert Litterman, who spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs and developed the Black–Litterman model together with Fischer Black in 1990.

[29][7] AXI / FXI was first conceived jointly by Darrell Duffie[30] at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Antje Berndt[31] and Yichao Zhu at the Australian National University.