Cathryn Chen

Cathryn Chen is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur with a career spanning investment banking, early-stage startups, and cross-border private markets. Before founding her own firms, Chen worked as an investment banker with institutions including Deutsche Bank, NM Rothschild, and JP Morgan in London, New York, and Hong Kong. During her investment banking career, she was involved with dozens of IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, and private placements, including transactions for Alibaba and Twitter. Her exposure to the demand for pre-IPO shares during these offerings influenced her entrepreneurial direction. Chen was also an early employee at EverString Technology, an ad-tech company backed by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Partners that was later sold to ZoomInfo.

With more than 11 years of experience in technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) investments across the United States and Asia, Chen founded MarketX to serve as a cross-border investment platform, connecting global investors with private technology opportunities from the United States, China, and Southeast Asia. Since founding MarketX Ventures, she has advised over 200 family offices globally, and MarketX has invested in and transacted with several dozen pre-IPO companies in the United States, China, and Europe, representing an aggregate market capitalization exceeding $500 billion. She later launched MarketX Ventures as a growth-to-late-stage focused venture fund, backed by technology executives such as the founders of Thrasio and Patreon.

Chen founded Radiate Ventures to support diverse founders building deeptech and artificial intelligence companies. Radiate Ventures specializes in investments in AI, deeptech, next-generation transportation, and vertical SaaS companies, employing a barbell strategy to target both early and late-stage ventures. Chen raised $30 million for the debut fund of Radiate Ventures, which is targeting $150 million. In addition to her roles as an investor in companies including Boom Supersonic, Stripe, and Solugen, Chen serves as a member of the board of directors at DIH Technology Co.

A Forbes 30 Under 30 alumna, Chen is a next-generation member of the Committee of 100, a nonprofit organization founded to give Chinese Americans a strong voice in U.S.-China relations and Asian American affairs. Beyond her investment work, she co-founded MoneyThink LA, a White House-recognized nonprofit that provides financial education to urban high school students nationwide. MoneyThink received the Top 10 Social Entrepreneurship Award from President Obama. Chen is a frequent speaker on the global conference circuit, having appeared at events such as the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, where she spoke on the main stage panel "Securing the Future: How Modern Innovation is Shaping Defense," and the FIIPRIORITY Miami summit alongside world leaders and investors, establishing her as a globally connected voice in venture capital and technology investment.