Gary Liu

Gary Liu is a US-born technology and media executive who grew up in Taiwan and New Zealand before spending roughly two decades in the American Northeast. He holds a degree in Economics from Harvard University and is an Aspen Institute Global Fellow. Early in his career he worked at Google and AOL, then joined Spotify as Head of Spotify Labs, where he led emerging-technology and business-strategy work for the company's global markets. He subsequently became COO and, in October 2015, CEO of Digg, the New York startup he helped pivot from an aggregator into a data-driven news platform.

In January 2017 Liu was appointed CEO of the South China Morning Post, the 113-year-old Hong Kong newspaper acquired by Alibaba Group. Over roughly six years he led a wide-ranging digital transformation of the century-old publisher — expanding its global audience, building new revenue lines, and launching experiments including an NFT/digital-collectibles business. He handed the CEO role to his successor in 2022–2023 as SCMP conducted a global search for new leadership.

Liu is now Co-Founder & CEO of Terminal 3, a Hong Kong–based Web3 data-infrastructure company building decentralized identity and privacy technology (zero-knowledge applications that let verifiable identities remain publicly anonymous). He is also Founder & Board Director of Artifact Labs, a historical/heritage NFT company spun out of SCMP's blockchain work. Beyond his operating roles, he serves as Chair of Web3 Harbour (an Asia-focused industry association for the decentralized economy), sits on the ICT Services Advisory Board of the Hong Kong Trade and Development Council, and serves on the Hong Kong Government's Web3 Task Force. He was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2019 and is a TED speaker.

• Invests as an individual angel, predominantly at Seed stage.
• Strong thematic tilt toward Web3, decentralized identity, and data/privacy infrastructure — areas that mirror the companies he builds and the industry body (Web3 Harbour) he chairs.
• Believes in advancing "an equitable digital future" and user-owned, privacy-preserving data — the stated mission behind Terminal 3, where private data is "freely composable" and identities are "verifiable" yet "publicly anonymous."
• Comfortable at the intersection of media, technology, and blockchain, drawing on operating experience at Spotify, Digg, and SCMP.