Former FTX Ventures Head Amy Wu Turns to AI

Amy Wu, former head of FTX Ventures, has discovered a brand new enterprise to steer. Certainly one of Silicon Valley’s seasoned corporations, Menlo Ventures, has introduced Wu onboard as a associate, leveraging her prowess in shopper startups.

Amy will likely be based mostly in NYC—and incessantly in SF and LA, in line with one in all her tweets— and can lead investments in shopper and gaming associated industries. Wu’s abilities lie within the charming cross-section of AI, gaming, the creator financial system, and shopper tech. Partnering with Shawn Carolan at Menlo, Wu goals to diversify and bolster their affect throughout a broad spectrum of shopper tech sectors.

The transfer marks a brand new chapter for each Wu and Menlo. For Wu, it is a return to the town’s startup scene the place she first made her mark within the early 2010s. For Menlo, it is an extension of its enterprise agency footprint from Silicon Valley to the buzzing hub of New York Metropolis, with associate Tyler Sosin already on the bottom.

A tumultuous chapter in Wu’s profession concerned her tenure at FTX Ventures, an arm of the notorious and now bankrupt crypto trade FTX. Its surprising collapse shook the business, triggering ripples of scandal that reverberate nonetheless amongst among the most resounding hits to the crypto business just like the MtGox hack and the Bitconnect debacle. The way in which Carolan put it, Wu “bought duped together with all people else.”

When requested about her FTX expertise, Wu described it as an intense studying interval.

“It was actually troublesome, I used to be there for a brief time period—it was 10 months and it felt like 10 years,” she instructed Axios. The state of affairs in the end underscored the challenges confronted by hyper-growth firms, regardless of Wu’s candid admission that she felt ill-prepared for the tumultuous fallout, which affected quite a few people, together with clients.

Carolan stated she’s the “very best” for the position at Menlo. Wu is becoming a member of Menlo because the agency is elevating its latest crop of funds, a stage when corporations sometimes onboard new companions. Amy is ready to work on early-stage investments in tech-driven areas like gaming, blockchain, and new promising endeavors like generative AI.

Whereas the blockchain is an space that has seen frenzied investing, Wu will now be on the intersection of it and AI. In latest months, enterprise capital has shifted away from crypto corporations in an enormous means. In April, Crunchbase reported that VC funding for crypto corporations was down 82% in comparison with final 12 months.