Matthew C. Le Merle is a Director, and serves as Chair of our board of directors. He and Ms. Davis founded and have managed Fifth Era and Blockchain Coinvestors since inception and have participated in, advised and sourced opportunities in Internet, fintech and blockchain for over 20 years. Mr. Le Merle has served as a Manager of the General Partner and the Investment Manager of Blockchain Coinvestors since its founding and as Managing Partner of Fifth Era, LLC since 2004 and Keiretsu Capital LLC since January 2014. Combined, they are among the most active early-stage venture managers. Mr. Le Merle and Ms. Davis co-wrote the books “The Fifth Era” and “Blockchain Competitive Advantage.”

Mr. Le Merle served as Managing Director and Chairman of Blockchain SPAC from November 2021 until its liquidation in November 2024. His board work has included holding Chairman or Non-Executive Director roles in 15 public and private companies, including chairman of the board of Concept Labs (Formerly Concept Art House), from 2006 to March 2024, chairman (Europe) of Securitize from 2019 to 2021, vice chairman of SFOX, Inc. from 2018 to 2021, advisory board director of Apple Pie Capital since 2013, advisory board director of Bitwise Asset Management since 2018, advisory board director of Hashkey Capital since 2022, advisor at Warburg Pincus LLC from 2019 to 2020, and Chairman of North America Advisory Board at Ningbo Shanshan, Ltd from 2009 to 2019. Prior to these roles, Mr. Le Merle held several roles as a strategy, operations and corporate finance advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, boards and executive teams with McKinsey & Company, as well as A.T. Kearney and Monitor Group, where he led both firms’ West Coast practices and at Booz & Company where he co-led the global digital practice. Mr. Le Merle also served as a corporate executive of Gap Inc., where he was SVP Strategy and Corporate Development and SVP Gap Global Marketing. Mr. Le Merle received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University and received his MBA from Stanford University.

Alison Davis co-founded and has co-managed Fifth Era and Blockchain Coinvestors since inception and has participated in, advised and sourced opportunities in Internet, fintech and blockchain for over 20 years. Ms. Davis served as Managing Director of Blockchain SPAC from November 2021 until it commenced its liquidation in November 2024. Ms. Davis has served as a Manager of the General Partner and the Investment Manager of Blockchain Coinvestors since its founding. Additionally, Ms. Davis has served as a Managing Partner of Fifth Era, LLC since 2004 and Keiretsu Capital Blockchain Fund Manager, LLC since 2018. Ms. Davis and Mr. Le Merle co-wrote several books, including “Corporate Innovation in the The Fifth Era” and “Blockchain Competitive Advantage.”

Ms. Davis is currently a board director of Kraken and Pagaya (PGY) and an advisor to Bitwise Asset Management Inc. She is also the Chairman of the Advisory Board for Blockchain Capital, the Chairman of Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and a director of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Northern California, and Cambridge in America. Over the last 20 years Alison has served on the boards of 25 public and private companies as Chairman, Audit Committee Chair, Compensation Committee Chair and Technology and Innovation Committee Chair. Previously, Ms. Davis served as a director of City National Bank, Diamond Foods, Dispatch Management Services, Fiserv Inc., First Data Corporation, Janus Henderson Group, LECG, Ooma Inc., Pacaso, Royal Bank of Scotland (now NatWest Group), Silicon Valley Bank, Unisys Corporation and Xoom Corporation. Ms. Davis was previously the Managing Partner of Belvedere Capital Partners LLC, a regulated bank holding company and private equity firm focused on investing in U.S. banks and financial services firms where she worked closely with the Federal Reserve, the OCC, the FDIC and various state banking regulators.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Davis served as the Chief Financial Officer of Barclays Global Investors Corp. (now BlackRock Inc.). She also spent 14 years as a strategy consultant and advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, boards and executive teams with McKinsey & Company, and as a practice leader with A.T. Kearney where she built and led the global Financial Services Practice. Ms. Davis is also active in the community supporting non-profits and social enterprises as a board director, fundraiser and volunteer. She has been named one of the “Most Influential Women in Business” multiple times by the San Francisco Business Times.

Mitchell Mechigian serves as a Director and is our Chief Executive Officer and will serve as a director upon the completion of this offering. Mr. Mechigian served as Chief Financial Officer of Blockchain SPAC from December 2021 through its liquidation in November 2024. He has served as a Partner at Blockchain Coinvestors since August 2022 and in various other roles since February 2021. Previously, Mr. Mechigian held various positions at Morgan Stanley from July 2016 through September 2019.

Christopher Nelson serves as our Chief Financial Officer and performed similar functions for the management team’s prior SPAC from 2021 to 2024. Mr. Nelson previously served as an Investment Associate, then as Head of Research and later as Director of Finance at Fifth Era Partners, formerly Blockchain Coinvestors, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage blockchain and artificial intelligence investments, where he had significant responsibility for investment research, evaluation of prospective investments, financial planning and firm operations, beginning in 2021. Prior to joining Fifth Era Partners, Mr. Nelson consulted on executive and board compensation at Mercer, a Marsh McLennan company, beginning in 2019. Mr. Nelson received a Bachelor of Business Administration from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Rebecca Macieira-Kaufmann is a seasoned CEO with broad leadership experience in sales, marketing, risk management, operations, and international business. She served as a director of the Blockchain SPAC from November 2021 until it commenced its liquidation in November 2024. She draws on deep expertise in the Fortune 50 financial services industry and has a demonstrated track record of leading highly successful business turnarounds, scaling new businesses, and expanding operations globally. She also brings a strong background in governance through her corporate and non-profit board experiences. Rebecca founded RMK Group, LLC, in 2020 to advise CEOs of start-ups in all phases of growth in the fintech, digital currency, identity management, wealth management, FI marketing software, payment systems and more. She is also the author of the book FitCEO. Prior to founding RMK Group, from 2008 – 2020 Ms. Macieira-Kaufmann was employed in various roles, including Head of International Personal Bank U.S (2016 – 2020), President & CEO of Banamex USA (2013 – 2016) and President, Citibank, California and Nevada (2008 – 2013). 

Don Putnam is the Executive Chairman of Energy Substantiation Partners LLC, which he founded in 2024, and Founder and Managing Partner of Grail Partners LLC, a role he has held since 2005. Mr. Putnam is a veteran financial executive, mathematician, and entrepreneur whose career has spanned investment banking, quantitative finance, machine learning, and blockchain innovation. Prior to founding Grail, he founded Putnam Lovell Securities in 1987 and served as Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Board, and Managing Director in the firm’s investment banking group. After the firm’s sale to National Bank Financial in 2002, he served as CEO and Vice Chairman of Putnam Lovell NBF until 2005. Mr. Putnam has maintained a long-standing interest in artificial intelligence and blockchain. With more than thirty years of experience in neural network mathematics and applications, he has worked with or studied most major forms of machine learning, including support vector machines, gradient boosting, and random forests. He is also a frequent writer and speaker on the business and policy implications of artificial intelligence. In addition to his roles at Energy Substantiation and Grail, Mr. Putnam serves on the Investment Committee of Ripon College, on the boards of Manifold Partners and Welton Investment Partners, and on the Advisory Board of Ridgedale Advisors. (NYSE: C)

Colin Wiel is an AI expert with experience as an inventor and entrepreneur in AI going back 30+ years. He is co-founder and CEO of Qurrent, whose product is a software framework for AI agent development and orchestration. Previous companies include Mynd, a tech enabled platform for investing in single-family rentals, named the fastest growing company in the Bay Area in 2020, and Waypoint Homes which built a technology platform to scale single family rental, raised over $3.5 billion, bought over 17,000 homes, and went public on the NYSE, as well as Wildlife Works Carbon, the global leader in forest conservation through carbon credits. Colin got his start in AI at Boeing in the 1990’s where he invented a new way to control anti-lock brakes for airplanes leveraging AI. Colin has multiple patents in artificial intelligence, has earned a spot on the Goldman Sachs Top 100 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs (2012), and was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2014).