I’m excited to share that I’m joining Pantera Capital as a Partner on the investment team. I’ll be focused on backing founders globally from Pre-Seed through Series B and will continue to be based in San Francisco.   

 

What I’m looking for

I’m joining to invest in founders innovating at the frontier of finance: the money, the mind that manages it, the markets it moves through, and the machines it runs on. 

 

A few beliefs shape how I invest:

 

Two foundational costs are going to zero. Every financial business runs on two inputs: cognition and settlement. For a century both were expensive, and the architecture of finance grew around that expense. Now, both are collapsing at once. AI is driving the cost of financial cognition (i.e. advisory, underwriting, compliance, operations) toward zero. Stablecoins are doing the same to settlement: a dollar can now cross the planet in seconds for less than a cent. I call this the Two Zeroes.

When both inputs go free, value migrates to what stays scarce: i.e. regulated trust, underlying assets, distribution, proprietary data. I’m looking for founders who will identify and own that scarcity.

Next, value also migrates down into the physical inputs that produce intelligence. AI may feel free at the point of use, but someone is paying for it in megawatts. The Bitcoin miners that Pantera has known for over a decade, spent that time learning how to source power, finance infrastructure and operate large computing fleets. Many now sit inside the AI supply chain. I want to back the founders solving the technology bottlenecks around compute and energy, and building the markets around both. 

 

New markets are opening. Every major cost collapse has opened markets that couldn’t clear before. Cheap computation gave us index derivatives and ad auctions. This cycle will price information by markets instead of pundits, give compute and power forward curves, and move assets that never fit the old rails onto new ones. The next great assets and exchanges are being founded now.

 

The labels are dissolving. Many of the defining financial companies of the next decade will run on stablecoin rails, and many will be run by AI agents. However, most won’t call themselves blockchain companies or AI companies at all, just as factories stopped advertising that they ran on electricity and startups stopped calling themselves dot-coms. Regulatory clarity is statute, stablecoins settle trillions a month as plumbing nobody notices, yet most of the world’s money still moves through systems designed for filing cabinets. The addressable market is the global financial system.

 

Founders come first. Great founders hold a memory of a future that does not exist yet and spend years building until the world catches up. In those years conviction and delusion wear the same face, and only time tells them apart. I aim to be the partner who recognizes that conviction early, challenges it honestly and remains useful for the full arc.

 

Why Pantera

In 2013, with Bitcoin at $65, Dan Morehead recognized that a new technology could become a new asset class and sized the firm’s conviction into one of the best trades of the 21st century. That orientation compounded, and the firm has become so much bigger than that trade. Under Paul Veradittakit leadership, Pantera’s venture portfolio has produced more than 20 unicorns. 

 

Over that time, the firm has developed an extensive portfolio support platform across hiring, marketing, research, and business development, and I’m so excited to invest with this full capacity to back founders. 

 

Pantera’s conviction in San Francisco also resonated with me as a Bay Area native. Many pass through Silicon Valley as tourists across the boom and bust cycles; Pantera set up a base here over a decade ago and has built the network and credibility to navigate the world’s most iconic technology center as a local.

 

Finally, I have known and admired several of this team for years for being the class act that they are, and it’s a pleasure to now walk into the same office.

 

I’m grateful to General Partners Dan, Paul, Franklin, and Cosmo for their trust. 

 

About me

I’m a Bay Area native and have a BSc from Carnegie Mellon. I began my career in public and infrastructure finance, moved into product and strategy roles in Silicon Valley, then moved to Germany in 2017 on early conviction in autonomous driving to found an  Autonomous Mobility team in Volkswagen Group. I invested across mobility, marketplaces, and deep tech at Speedinvest and Maniv before nearly four years at Kraken Ventures, leaving as Partner with early investments in multiple unicorns.

 

If you’re building at the frontier, my inbox is open. stuti@panteracapital.com