Digital Asset has appointed Tony James, executive vice chairman of Blackstone, AG Gangadhar, former engineering executive at Amazon, Google and Uber, and Stephan Leithner, executive board member of Deutsche Börse Group, to its board of directors.
James and Gangadhar are additions to the company’s board of directors.
They join Digital Asset CEO, Blythe Masters, and company founders, Sunil Hirani (CEO of TrueEX) and Don Wilson (CEO of DRW).
In addition to serving as executive vice chairman of Blackstone, James is also a member of Blackstone’s management committee and sits on each of the firm’s investment committees. James previously served as the firm’s president and COO.
Before joining Blackstone in 2002, James was chairman of global investment banking and private equity at Credit Suisse First Boston and a member of the executive board.
At Google, Gangadhar built the first cloud infrastructure services, including Google Compute Engine, Google AppEngine, Google Cloud SQL, and Google Container Engine.
Gangadhar was responsible for all of Google's cluster management infrastructure including Borg, Omega and Machine Management.
He also managed the application infrastructure that powers Google’s productivity applications, including Google Drive and Google Docs.
Stephan Leithner recently joined the executive board of Deutsche Börse, where he is responsible for the exchange’s post-trade business, Clearstream, and its data and index businesses.
Before joining Deutsche Börse Group, Leithner was a partner at the alternative investment firm EQT, a position he held since 2016.
Previously, he also served as member of the management board of Deutsche Bank from 2012 until 2015, where he led the bank’s global Corporate Finance franchise.
Leithner was also a partner at McKinsey and Company and held leadership roles at the Swiss Institute for Banking and Finance.
Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset, said: “Digital Asset is on an ambitious path to deliver the first distributed ledger technology solution to power systemically consequential marketplaces. It is now time to scale access to our technology to meet rising demand.”
She added: “James, Gangadhar, and Leithner bring unparalleled experience in driving scale in private equity, technology and financial industries. They will help shape our strategy and accelerate our mission to unleash web-paced innovation across multiple industries.”
James commented: “Blockchain technologies have enormous potential. Digital Asset has both the leadership and the technology it needs to deliver. I'm delighted to play a role in guiding the company.”
Gangadhar said: “The engineering challenges that Digital Asset has already conquered impress me. I’m excited to be part of a team that is defining a category for an entirely new class of distributed applications.”
Leithner commented: “I am delighted to lend my expertise to help guide a company that is clearly on the forefront of a new technology revolution – a revolution which is certain to transform the financial services industry and other markets.”
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