Aptos Labs adds former Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein and OpenAI exec Kevin Weil to advisory board

Quick Take

  • Aptos Labs added former Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein and OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil to its advisory board.
  • Sonnenshein and Weil will help bolster Aptos’s growth in artificial intelligence, institutional adoption and other endeavors.

Blockchain firm Aptos Labs has added former Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein and OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil to its advisory board.

Sonnenshein and Weil will help bolster Aptos's growth in artificial intelligence, institutional adoption and other endeavors, according to a release shared with The Block.

Sonnenshein formerly served as an analyst for the banking firms Barclays and Bank of America, as well as an associate at banking giant JP Morgan, before his 10-year tenure at Grayscale. Aptos Labs aims to use Sonnenshein's experience to bring digital assets to mainstream investors, while Weil will leverage his background in OpenAI to incorporate AI into blockchain applications.

"Welcoming Michael and Kevin to our advisory board reflects our rapid growth and signals the tremendous opportunities ahead," Aptos Labs CEO and cofounder Mo Shaikh told The Block. "Their expertise will be vital as we build infrastructure that democratizes DeFi for both institutions and individuals."

Sonnenshein left his role as Grayscale Investments CEO in May of this year to pursue other interests.

Aptos Labs, the developer of the Layer 1 blockchain network Aptos, was founded by former Meta engineers Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching. In 2022 alone, Aptos Labs raised $350 million across two funding rounds.


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About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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