Lina Cheng

Lina is a serial founder turned investor who’s spent her career pushing the boundaries of AI — first as a builder, now as a backer. She previously founded and exited two startups: one in natural language processing, and another in diagnostic health AI. Before that, she earned her PhD in Machine Learning from Stanford, where her work on transformer architectures helped inform the systems many modern LLMs are built on today.

Following her time in academia and entrepreneurship, Lina led applied AI research teams at DeepMind, where she worked on real-world deployments of cutting-edge models in health, education, and logistics. Her experience straddles theory and practice — and her ability to spot technical edge early is unmatched.

At VentureCapital, Lina leads investments in foundational AI infrastructure, human-computer interaction, and systems thinking at scale. She’s known for her intellectual rigor, her direct and generous feedback, and her hands-on support in early-stage technical validation. When she commits to a team, she goes deep — helping founders refine their ideas, pressure-test architectures, and push toward the frontier.