A cross-disciplinary network of experts bringing knowledge, perspective, and experience to the ideas and people we back.

Chen Qiufan

Science fiction writer · AI and futures

Science fiction writer and futurist working where AI, narrative and technology ethics meet; author of Waste Tide and, with Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041.

Xin Liu

Artist and engineer · Space and technology

Artist and engineer; former arts curator of the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, working across sculpture, video and aerospace engineering.

Annette Mees

Artistic director · Immersive and XR

Artistic director and creative producer leading Audience Labs; led innovation at the Royal Opera House and produced the first hyper-reality opera.

Yang Zi

Curator and researcher

Independent curator and researcher in Beijing, formerly at UCCA, who studies how belief and philosophy shaped Chinese contemporary art.

Maya Kramer

Artist and educator · NYU Shanghai

Artist and assistant arts professor at NYU Shanghai whose work on deep time and climate draws on geology, materials and Arctic fieldwork.

Qiu Anxiong

Artist and animator · ECNU

Artist and professor at East China Normal University; his ink-animation trilogy New Book of Mountains and Seas is held by MoMA and the Met.

Trung Mai

Architect · Hanoi Ad Hoc

Architect and founder of Hanoi Ad Hoc; his Reincarnated Grid was shown at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, and he received a Prince Claus Fund Seed Award in 2024.

Jacob S. Walker

Architect · Ballistic Architecture Machine

Co-founder of Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM), the Beijing and Shanghai practice behind the Indigo Playground and the Baoshan waste-to-energy plant; he looks at the city as landscape, from playgrounds to the worlds inside video games.