Global Investor Jeremy Kranz On Why Not ‘Everything Important Happens In Silicon Valley’

Jeremy Kranz left GIC, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, in late 2021 after nearly two decades. During his tenure, he served on the boards of DoorDash and Affirm, and was heavily involved with food delivery companies across emerging markets.

An early investor in Zoom, Coinbase and Snowflake, Kranz went on to launch his own venture firm, Sentinel Global, in August 2022 with the goal of “connecting visionary founders with real-world adopters.” In June, Kranz announced the close of the San Francisco-based firm’s inaugural fund, Sentinel Fund I, with committed capital totaling $213.5 million.

During his time at GIC, the most valuable lesson he learned, Kranz said,  “is how emerging markets evolved in innovation capability.”

“Twenty years ago, emerging markets were deficient in core innovation. Ten years ago, they became excellent fast followers,” he told Crunchbase News. “By the time COVID happened, emerging markets — mainly China — had become leaders in core innovation, particularly in AI.”

The Chinese, in Kranz’s view, commercialized AI “more effectively and far earlier” than Silicon Valley discovered its true promise.

With Sentinel, Kranz aims to take the lessons he learned during his time at GIC to invest globally in multistage enterprise technology companies.

Kranz describes Sentinel as a multistage venture fund that is thematic in nature. It focuses on three core themes: interoperable commerce; the financial internet, or the “Finternet;” and next-generation enterprise stacks.

In an email interview with Crunchbase News, Kranz shared his vision for Sentinel, why he doesn’t believe every development from OpenAI should be breaking news, and why he thinks that one day IPOs could become nonevents.

The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What would you say are the most valuable lessons you learned from your time at GIC? What were some of the most notable investments you were involved in?

Besides how emerging markets evolved in innovation capability, I learned that it’s important to remain rational through market cycles. There are market cycles where you’re trying to be pragmatic and rational in environments that are fundamentally crazy — either so bullish that pricing defies belief, or so negative that no deals get done and innovation seems to have stopped. You have to maintain good grounding and interpret who’s operating from fear versus who brings clarity of purpose, underwriting and vision.

My most notable investments centered around what I call “the movement of people and packaging of food.” I’ve been passionate about food delivery since childhood and consider myself an expert in this space. Over my 25 years in VC, I followed this trend line from early losses with Webvan (a dot-com grocery delivery company) to investing in food delivery during a major down market — companies like DoorDash and Uber in the U.S., Meituan in China, and Flipkart, Ola, Grab, Souq and Rappi in other emerging markets.

These evolved into platform companies, not just delivery companies, expanding into payments and other services. … Most companies I backed are now over 10 years old and have become the incumbents that the next generation is targeting.

Tell us more about Sentinel. What is your average check size? Who are your LPs?

We typically invest in Series A, B, and C rounds, writing checks ranging from single digits to mid- to high-double digits (in millions). Our LP base includes prominent sovereign wealth funds and family offices that are available to partner with us as co-investors on deals.

What we look for is the ability to leverage our network outside the U.S. to help companies go global. We call this “Sentinel Labs” — it’s the continuation of work I did at GIC with the Bridge Forum I founded, which was a platform connecting enterprises outside the U.S. with startups in developed markets.

Why do you think China’s AI tech is ahead of the U.S.? How has that allowed China to infiltrate the U.S. economy? What are U.S. investors still missing?

The Chinese are exceptionally smart about commercializing technology. Years ago, pre-COVID, I visited ByteDance‘s R&D labs. After visiting labs at Microsoft, Google and other great tech companies, I know what American Silicon Valley companies with infinite R&D budgets look like, often tinkering on quantum computing and other research without clear commercialization paths.

But at ByteDance, scientists are responsible for both inventing and commercializing. During my full-day visit, they showed me not just basic research, but demos of technologies they were actively commercializing. The pathway from R&D to commercialization was maintained tightly; they had to show results within a year.

This approach allowed companies to successfully infuse AI long before Silicon Valley popularized the idea of a new AI Industrial Revolution.

TikTok exemplifies this perfectly. TikTok’s success wasn’t due to better content or superior marketing to kids. It was simply smarter at using AI to make content more attractive, addictive and engaging. Its algorithm for curating user content is its unique value proposition, predicated on extremely effective AI that analyzes user signals to determine optimal daily content.

DJI provides another compelling example. Many drone companies in Silicon Valley had substantial funding and talent, but couldn’t make drones fly long enough, carry sufficient weight, or avoid obstacles. DJI built what I consider the world’s greatest consumer drone by leveraging AI and recognizing that features like sonic collision avoidance required purpose-built semiconductors. DJI partnered with the Chinese government to develop semiconductor processes, enabling them to employ and commercialize AI in drones with unmatched results.

The contrast is striking: In the U.S., we found ourselves stuck in labs with clipboards and lab coats, essentially waiting for breakthroughs to happen.

Today, Americans are inventing and commercializing applications across various technologies, particularly LLMs, which appears to be effective catch-up. In some areas, we might be leaping forward.

However, I find it concerning that U.S. media has a celebrity-obsessed approach. Every development from OpenAI becomes breaking news, creating the impression that everything important happens in Silicon Valley. I absolutely disagree with this narrative.

I’m confident that at this very moment, the Chinese have invented and commercialized AI that is not only globally competitive but arguably more effective for specific applications. They will export these technologies. We must be careful not to let the loudest environment be viewed as the most successful.

While I’m proud of America’s AI leadership and expect continued leadership, we cannot be overly self-centered. We must remain deferential to the fact that China has a long history of inventing and commercializing AI before Silicon Valley. Given this track record, it’s hard to believe they’ve suddenly fallen behind.

The media hype around the Valley needs to be balanced with realistic understanding of the past 15 years in artificial intelligence development globally.

Where are the next great tech IPOs (really) coming from? Why does today’s AI boom hinge “on the ‘boring’ infrastructure layer no one’s covering?”

At Sentinel, we hold a controversial belief about the future of IPOs. We think the current administration is blazing a trail of tokenization across all asset classes. Right now, we’re seeing tokenization for cash — the most liquid asset in the world got more liquid. While it seems odd to make cash more liquid through tokenization, there are genuine benefits.

This began with the GENIUS (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) Act. The next development will be the Clarity Act, which we expect will enable tokenization of public stocks, private companies and private credit. The experimental possibilities are extensive.

When this happens, IPOs will become one liquidity option among many, but may not be the highest priority for all companies. Today’s secondaries market is booming but restricted — you must be a registered securities buyer, and transactions are largely one-to-one. You can’t simply purchase company shares on a platform like eBay.

We envision a world where the Clarity Act and tokenization of real-world assets dramatically transform how private markets raise money and seek liquidity. I’d call this not one black swan event, but possibly 10 black swans. We’re entering an era where traditionally illiquid asset classes may become significantly more liquid.

This shift will fundamentally change the nature and importance of IPOs. For some companies, IPOs could become nonevents because public-market investors will have already accessed tokenized versions of those shares before the IPO. The IPO becomes a less significant milestone in a company’s lifecycle.

How do you believe the Trump administration is lowering friction in the capital markets, and what does that mean for the future of venture capital investing?

The capital market changes won’t necessarily impact venture investing first. The transformation will likely begin with digital cash, then extend to public stocks and private credit, with private companies coming later in the sequence.

The key development is tokenization of real-world assets, which features two particularly innovative elements for capital markets.

First, smart contracts can embed information and validation directly into transactions. KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements can be built into token transactions, significantly reducing friction and costs for market changes.

Second, and more controversially, is enabling yield-based transfers of cash or tokenized money market funds as payment methods. This concept is potentially transformative.

Currently, we deposit cash in banks that provide roughly 2.5% returns even when Treasuries yield 5%, because banks capture the difference while risking our deposits in other assets. With blockchain-based saving accounts tied to Treasuries, I should receive nearly the full 5% yield.

The revolutionary aspect: if I can use these tokenized treasury-linked assets for payments, every transaction transfers yield rights along with the principal. When I Venmo you $10, I’d transfer the rights to the yield on that $10. This would be both exciting and terrifying for global capital markets.

There’s a scenario where this experiment could be given life through innovation-friendly regulation. This represents a major debate point for the Clarity Act. While the GENIUS Act sidestepped this issue, the Clarity Act will address it directly.

Companies like Circle already provide rewards for USDC that could be perceived as yield, but it’s structured as token rewards rather than direct U.S. dollar yield. We’re just one step away from explicit dollar-based yield on cash that can be used for payments and transfers.

This is the major black swan event I believe is approaching.

Illustration: Dom Guzman