Sanat Rao

Sanat Rao is a tech investor and General Partner at BlockTower Capital, a leading digital asset management firm, where he manages the market-neutral crypto fund and focuses on early-stage crypto investments.1 He was previously the managing director and co-founder at Gamma Point Capital, a market-neutral hedge fund acquired by BlockTower Capital.1

Rao has extensive experience in venture capital and investments:

1. He was a Partner at IDG Ventures, leading early-stage investments in AI, fintech, e-commerce, SaaS, and enterprise software.1
2. He started his investing career at Intel Capital, working on investment and corporate development teams.1
3. He was a partner and founding member at iSPIRT, leading M&A transactions in the Indo-US corridor.1

Key achievements:

• Invested over $100 million in 30 companies across multiple geographies1
• Executed 12 M&A transactions valued at $1.5 billion cumulatively1
• Built Intel's $100 million business in Emerging Markets1

Rao's career began as a chip design engineer at Intel, where he worked on the Pentium IV and Core microprocessor design teams.1 He later led Intel's embedded & ADAS business in emerging markets.1

Education:

• BS & MS degrees in Computer Engineering
• MBA degree
• Guest lecturer at Duke Fuqua School of Business in venture capital & private equity track1

Rao is actively involved in the crypto and Web3 space, having invested in and advised crypto exchanges, prime brokerage platforms, decentralized finance (DeFI) projects, and real-world asset platforms on blockchain.1