Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux is an American technology entrepreneur and investor, whose 25 years career has spanned the US, Asia, and Europe. She is the Founder/CEO of Global Space Ventures, which backs emerging technology pioneers across AI, biotechnology, space and beyond. An early investor in SpaceX, she was also instrumental as co-founder/President of Escape Dynamics in meaningful advances in beamed energy technology, and its onboarding on NASA’s roadmap. She is passionate about harnessing technology to build better futures at scale, and advance STEM, innovation, and national security.
She serves on the board of directors of XPRIZE, which brought into existence in 2004 the first privately funded crewed spaceship to reach space and launched the $100M Carbon Removal XPRIZE with Elon Musk. She also serves on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Science Board; on NATO Maritime Unmanned Systems Innovation Advisory Board; on the advisory board of the Truman Center for National Policy; and the board of the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath). She is also a security fellow of the Truman National Security Project, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, and Women Corporate Directors.
A leading voice in innovation and national security, she has contributed to U.S. congressional taskforces on innovation, Council on Foreign relations study groups on transformative technologies and U.S. Policy towards Asia, presided over policy discussions ranging from Space Force to U.S. national security and US-China relations, and briefed members of the U.S. Senate on commercial space and national security. Her earlier finance career, which she started working for Goldman Sachs in investment banking in Europe in the late 1990s, also included leadership roles at leading global investment firms TPG-Axon and Renaissance Technologies in the US and Asia. She holds an MBA from ESSEC (France) and Harvard Business School.
Her entrepreneurial work has won many industry accolades. Escape Dynamics’ innovative approach was recognized by Scientific American which featured its technology as one of ten “2015 World Changing Idea” and Fast Company which ranked it third of the “Top 10 World’s Most Innovative Space Companies 2016” after SpaceX and Blue Origin. Laetitia is also a recipient of Vanity Fair France’s 50 Most Influential in the World and 15 Most Influential Entrepreneurs (2016), Institutional Investor’s rising star award (2010), the Women Forum for the Economy and Society’s rising talent award (2010). She also won Harvard Business School’s business plan competition top award (2004) for launching the first human egg-freezing US technology company.
Her earlier finance career spanned diverse sectors including technology, energy, chemicals, hotel/gaming, and consumer/retail. In addition to starting her own investment firm, she held leadership roles at leading global investment firms Renaissance Technologies and TPG-Axon, worked at Goldman Sachs in Europe on cross-border merger and acquisition transactions involving US, European, and Chinese state-owned companies, and at Paribas in China on Asian equity mandates.
Her political leadership has included serving on the National Finance Committee for the Biden/Harris campaign (for which she raised directly as full-time volunteer approximately $6.5M) and the Clinton/Kaine presidential campaign (for which “Entrepreneurs for Hillary” which she co-founded and scaled into a diverse nationwide coalition raised over $8M).
She also has an extensive record of TV and print media appearances in the US and France, on technology, innovation, foreign policy, national security, and the economy.
An American by choice, Laetitia is a graduate from ESSEC and Harvard Business School where she was a recipient of the Harvard Business School Consuelo Balsan fellowhip. Born in France, she is a native French speaker, and also lived and worked in China and the UK for several years. She has two children, Kinga Shuilong (10y) and Ronin Phi (8y) and is the granddaughter of French scientist André de Cayeux de Sénarpont, whom the Cailleux crater on the moon is named after.