Ernestine Fu (born April 30, 1992) is an American

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

, investor, and author.

Early life and education

Fu was born in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, where she attended

North Hollywood High School North Hollywood High School (NHHS) is a public high school in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is in the San Fernando Valley and enrolls approximately 2,500 students. Several neighborhoods, including m ...

Highly Gifted Magnet The Highly Gifted Magnet (HGM) is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District's Gifted and Talented program, designed for students of extraordinary intelligence who have unique intellectual, social and emotional abilities not nurtured by nor ...

program. Fu graduated with her B.S., M.S., MBA, and Ph.D. from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Career

Fu is an investment partner at Brave Capital. Inspired by her colleagues' government and national security backgrounds, particularly their work at the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

and

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the lates ...

, she started her career at Alsop Louie Partners while still as an undergraduate at Stanford University and has since been a venture partner at the firm. She closed her first deal in her first two months at the firm, and was recognized for bringing a fresh face to venture capital as a young Asian-American woman. She is frequently cited on the topic of autonomous vehicles. She has made investments in early-stage technology companies like Zoox (now a subsidiary of

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

) and

nuTonomy NuTonomy (stylized as nuTonomy) was an MIT spin-off technology startup company that made software to build self-driving cars and autonomous mobile robots. The company was founded in 2013. In August 2016, it launched its robo-taxi service (pilot ...

(now part of the

Motional Motional is an American autonomous vehicle company founded in March 2020 as a joint venture between automaker Hyundai Motor Group and auto supplier Aptiv. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Motional also maintains operations in Pittsburgh, S ...

autonomous driving joint venture between

Aptiv Aptiv PLC is an Irish- American automotive technology supplier with headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Aptiv grew out of the now-defunct American company, Delphi Automotive Systems, which itself was formerly a component of General Moto ...

and

Hyundai Motor Group The Hyundai Motor Group (HMG; ; stylized as HYUNDAI) is a South Korean '' chaebol'' (loosely similar to a multinational conglomerate but without a central holding company or ownership structure) headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. The HMG a ...

). She completed her doctoral thesis on autonomous vehicles at Stanford University's Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, and her research has received awards at academic conferences such as the ACM

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human–computer interaction and is one of the top-ranked conferences in computer science. ...

. She has been a director at Hyundai Motor Group. Fu has been an advisor to

DBS Bank DBS Bank Limited is a Singaporean multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered at the Marina Bay Financial Centre in the Marina Bay district of Singapore. The bank was previously known as The Development Bank of Si ...

. She helped launch the bank's venture debt program for financing startups and was the face of DBS BusinessClass, a program to foster entrepreneurship in Asia. Fu has taught courses on the effects and applications of emerging technology as an adjunct professor and is co-director of the Frontier Technology Lab.

Recognition

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' named her to its inaugural 30 Under 30 list; '' Vanity Fair'' named her to its Next Establishment list; and

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

named her to its Silicon Valley 100 list. Prior to including her on its 30 Under 30 list, Forbes featured her on the cover of its print magazine in the United States. She received the Kauffman Fellowship for venture capitalists and Eisenhower Fellowship for mid-career professionals. She is also a Mensan.

Selected publications

* ''Civic Work, Civic Lessons'' with former

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (SLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% i ...

Dean

Thomas Ehrlich Thomas Ehrlich (born March 4, 1934) is an American legal scholar. From 2000 to 2010 he was a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He has previously served as president of Indiana University, provost of the Uni ...

. * ''Renewed Energy'' with

John Weyant John P. Weyant is a research professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. He obtained his PhD from UC Berkeley in management science in 1976 and has been at Stanford since 1977. His research is focused on climate change, ...

and Justin Bowersock.

References

External links

Corporate Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fu, Ernestine Living people American venture capitalists Women venture capitalists American women investors Stanford University alumni American people of Chinese descent Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Mensans 21st-century American non-fiction writers American business writers 21st-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople