Tony Zhang

Tony Zhang is a Founding Partner of Ventek Ventures, an early-stage, cross-border venture firm he helped launch in 2013 and which is based in Los Angeles. The firm describes itself as founder-operated, combining venture investing with hands-on business and technology consulting and advisory work aimed at helping portfolio companies reach growth, IPO, or M&A outcomes. Ventek concentrates on companies with the technology, team, and timing to capture sustainable markets across the US, China, and Southeast Asia, and has expanded selectively into other emerging markets in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

Before Ventek, Zhang was a Venture Partner at Anthem Venture Partners, where he worked on capital allocation to early technology companies. He is also an operator as well as an investor: he was Founder and CEO of Foodomo, a food-delivery company (later acquired), giving him direct startup-building experience alongside his investing career. He studied engineering at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering.

Zhang's investing has skewed toward technically ambitious sectors — robotics, hardware, and AI — and he has taken board and governance roles with several portfolio companies, including board membership at Nightingale Security (autonomous robotic aerial security) and at Soul App, the Chinese social/"metaverse" platform. Ventek is frequently cited as the first investor in Soul, which later became majority-owned by Tencent, one of the firm's signature early calls.

• Invests at the pre-seed, seed, and early Series A stages, with a cross-border lens spanning the US, Greater China, and Southeast Asia
• Targets "platform businesses where there exists a large market with technology tailwinds" — the firm's stated framing on its own site
• Sector interests: software, hardware, robotics, networking, e-commerce/marketplaces, gaming, and AI/AIGC
• Looks for teams that combine "the technology, team and timing to capture sustainable markets", with a realistic path to IPO or M&A
• Pairs capital with operator-level advisory (business and technology consulting), reflecting Zhang's own background as a founder/CEO
• Willing to back frontier and emerging-market platforms others overlook (B2B commerce, payments, and logistics across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia)