Jay Eum is a 20-year veteran venture capitalist with extensive investment experience across both institutional and corporate firms. Jay is the Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures, Global Frontier Technology Ventures. GFT Ventures invests in category leading early-stage startups focused on AI/data science, blockchain/web3, and other frontier technologies.
Jay co-founded TransLink Capital, a Palo Alto based early stage venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs developing customer connections and partnerships in Asia. Jay was responsible for leading investments in Carbonite (NASDAQ: CARB), Chartboost (acq'd by Zynga), Coin (acq'd by Fitbit), CoolerScreens, Enterprise DB (acq'd by Peak Equity), Epic (acq'd by Byju's), Forte, Klaytn, nWay (acq'd by Animoca), Penrose, Provenance, Quantstamp, Rally, SoundHound (NASDAQ: SOUN), Singular, Terra and YuMe (NYSE: YUME).
Prior to TransLink, Jay was Managing Director of Samsung Ventures where he established and led the US venture capital operations for Samsung, responsible for U.S. based investments and portfolio management. Jay started his venture capital career at the Silicon Valley office of Vertex Management, the Singapore based venture capital arm of investment firm Temasek Holdings.
Jay received an MBA from Stanford University and M.S/B.S. in Chemistry from Seoul National University. Jay serves as Chairman and Board Director of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA). Jay is also an active angel investor and advisor to several start-ups including Coupang (NYSE: CPNG), KiwiCo, Korbit (acq'd by Nexon), Korea Credit Data, Merit, Noom, SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) and Tapas (acq'd by Kakao).
