Written by: Alice, Deep Tide TechFlow
Recently, I noticed an interesting phenomenon in the AI circle: more and more female executives are stepping into the spotlight.
On December 30, Meta announced its acquisition of Manus for a high price of $2 billion, bringing 90s-born COO CZ Chen into the public eye. She graduated from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and earned her master's degree from Columbia University. She started working in 2018, having worked at Vanke and FA institutions, and made her final leap into Manus in 2024, achieving financial freedom.
On January 9, at the MiniMax listing bell-ringing ceremony, standing alongside 36-year-old founder Yan Junjie was a 1994-born woman, Yuan Yeyi.
This 31-year-old COO is now worth 4.8 billion Hong Kong dollars.
What is Yuan Yeyi's background?
She studied electronic engineering at Johns Hopkins University, minoring in economics and mathematics. After graduating in 2017, she joined SenseTime, starting as a financing manager, then becoming the assistant to CEO Xu Li, and later the director of the innovation business department, witnessing SenseTime's journey from a unicorn to a public listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
In 2022, Yan Junjie decided to leave SenseTime to found MiniMax, and Yuan Yeyi followed without hesitation.
Her value is not just in following.
The MiniMax prospectus shows that Yuan Yeyi has almost single-handedly managed all affairs of the company except for technical research and development: product, commercialization, board, operations, management… Her annual salary is $1.479 million, more than the combined salaries of all other executive directors, which speaks volumes.
Not just in China, but globally in the AI circle, the power of women should not be underestimated.
@DanielaAmodei, with a background in English literature, after working at Stripe and OpenAI, co-founded Anthropic with her brother Dario in 2021, serving as president, focusing on daily operations and commercialization, driving the marketization of the Claude product.
Lila Ibrahim, a former Intel executive, joined DeepMind in 2018 as its first COO, responsible for daily operations, partnerships, social impact, external affairs, and government relations.
@miramurati, a former OpenAI CTO of Albanian descent, came to the U.S. on a scholarship at 16, transitioned from the Tesla Model X team to OpenAI, and eventually left to establish Thinking Machines Lab, valued at $9 billion…
This scene feels familiar.
From 2017 to 2021, during the golden age of cryptocurrency, a stunning landscape emerged with female CMOs and COOs.
The most well-known is Binance co-founder and CMO @heyibinance (now a co-CEO), who has been present at every strategic shift from Shanghai to Tokyo, then from Malta to Paris and Dubai, helping the company become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
Lisa Loud, from Apple engineer to PayPal's head of the Canadian market, jumped to BitMEX in 2017 as CMO, after which BitMEX became the largest cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform in the world for a time.
Cynthia Wu, COO of Matrixport and former vice president of product development at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, brought traditional financial experience into crypto financial services, helping the company become one of Asia's largest digital asset service platforms.
…
Once, cryptocurrency was the focal point of global assets, and the spotlight naturally shone on these female executives standing at the center of the stage.
But as the tide recedes, the main characters change.
Now, AI is the focus of the spotlight, and we see Daniela Amodei making it onto the Forbes billionaire list and Yuan Yeyi confidently ringing the bell at the MiniMax listing ceremony.
At its core, Crypto and AI share astonishing similarities: "both cutting-edge and down-to-earth."
The cutting-edge aspect is reflected in the technology itself; blockchain reconstructs trust mechanisms, and AI reconstructs productivity, both being foundational technologies that can change the world.
The down-to-earth aspect is reflected in the profiles of the founders, most of whom have technical backgrounds and are well-versed in code but feel unfamiliar with marketing, especially government relations and public relations.
This is where the value of female COOs/CMOs lies; they are the bridge between technical geniuses and the external world, able to engage in deep conversations with technical teams while also telling compelling stories to investors and users.
Daniela Amodei translates AI safety philosophy into executable business strategies, allowing Claude to break through the shadow of ChatGPT; Yuan Yeyi takes MiniMax from the lab to the consumer market; He Yi has long served as chief customer officer, personally answering user queries and building trust.
As a product moves away from pure technology, the need to face the consumer market becomes more pronounced, and the advantages of female executives become increasingly evident.
After all, public relations and product development require not combative thinking, but empathy.
From another perspective, capable female executives will vote with their feet, going to places where they can showcase their talents and create value. If they start leaving an industry, it indicates that the commercial certainty of that industry is fading.
The current problem in the crypto industry is clear: there is a lack of talent who can transform technology into products that the public can accept; mass adoption and positive externalities remain mere talk. Observing any emerging industry reveals this pattern: when female executives with technical understanding, business sensitivity, and narrative ability begin to rise, the industry truly shifts from being technology-driven to commercialization and popularization.
Their emergence marks the true maturity of the industry.
The AI circle has already experienced this turning point, with female executives like Daniela Amodei and Yuan Yeyi driving the productization of technology, bringing AI from laboratory algorithms into daily life and the business world.
In contrast, if the crypto industry cannot retain "elites who can speak human language," it deserves to continue wallowing in the quagmire of PVP.
The flow of talent is the barometer of the industry.
Wherever they go, value is created; where they leave, often marks the place where the bubble bursts.
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