Stephanie Zhan
Seed/early
Backstory
I grew up across Asia, in the early days of the internet. I saw how technology elevated the lives of a billion people through two decades of transformative socioeconomic change. That scale of ambition, energy, and appetite for change shaped me and drove me to spend my life’s work on the hardest, most transformative problems. As a founder I work with puts it, “to work on the root node problems of our time.” I believe in self-agency and bias for action—and in deep-rooted optimism and conviction, and a will to make things reality.
As a child of the internet, I learned to code through building basic video games. Mesmerized by Silicon Valley, I came to Stanford to study Computer Science (in the early days of AI, under Andrew Ng) and immerse myself in this community. I loved it.
Shortly after, I was lucky to be at ground zero through a couple of friends who co-founded OpenAI together in 2015. I remember the sheer will and urgency, passionate mission and vast vision that compelled them to make it a reality. In a short decade, I’m in awe of where we are today as an industry.
I genuinely believe we are living through the most exciting time in all of history. As a parent to young kids, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to shape it in a way that makes the world better for our future generations. I love what we do – to partner with the most ambitious founders, from idea to IPO and beyond – and I feel so grateful to do this every day.
On the Lookout for
– Founders who have ambition to build something lasting and transformational.Founders who are thoughtful, with high slope, agency, a bias for action, and who have deep mental and emotional fortitude. Most importantly, genuinely good people.
– Being your very first believer. Most founders I work with and whose boards I serve on (Linear, Reflection AI, Ricursive Intelligence, Skild AI) we partnered with at company formation, with Sequoia as their first believer.
– AI. It is the most important theme of the next decade. The scale of change. The velocity. We are living through the most seismic period in history.
I’m passionate about:
– Collaboration in an AI native world (Linear)
– Building towards OSS Superintelligence (Reflection AI)
– AI for chip design (Ricursive Intelligence)
– Superintelligence in our physical world (Skild AI)
I’m excited about the next inning we have ahead of us:
– What happens now with Claude Code and Codex in the hands of everyone? How do current and next generations wield these powerful tools?
– What happens when we have superintelligent AI colleagues in both the white collar and blue collar workforce?
– What happens when AI is applied to every industry, gradually then suddenly? Which industries come next?
– What forms of critical infrastructure (energy, power, chips and data centers) do we need to support what’s coming?
– What other new innovation (new research breakthroughs) do we need next, to accelerate our path to superintelligence?
Buckle up, and enjoy the ride!
Personal Side
The quest for superintelligence / Creating moments of joy and magic in work and for our friends, family, and kids / Paddle-boarding and Snow-shoeing / Ares the Rhodesian Ridgeback
