As Chief Strategy Officer, Dr. James Zhang leads corporate strategy, strategic business development, investor relations, and Asia Pacific operations. Before joining Centrillion, he was a founding partner at Formation 8, a Silicon Valley based venture capital fund with over $1B under management and early backer of unicorns like Oculus VR, Wish.com, and Oscar. Dr. Zhang is also a Partner of China based GRC SinoGreen Fund which invests in breakthrough technologies in both US and China. He led GRC SinoGreen’s investment in Centrillion.
Previously Dr. Zhang was a venture capitalist at Softbank China Venture Capital and Khosla Ventures. He took Khosla Ventures portfolio company LanzaTech to China by brokering deals between LanzaTech and Chinese steel-makers. As a biotechnologist, Dr. Zhang was a co-founder of BioConsortia and founding member of Mendel Biotechnology. He led Mendel Biotechnology’s business development and its agricultural collaboration with Monsanto and biofuel collaboration with BP. Dr. Zhang received his undergraduate training in biological sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China. He has a PhD in Genetics from the University of California Davis and completed his post-doctoral and business training at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, respectively.