Deep-tech investor with over 22 years in finance. Founding partner of Lionheart Ventures, partner at Sentire Ventures, and Investor & Advisor at New Generation. Portfolio spans frontier technology — from an early investment in Anthropic to backing Perseus Defense (YC S25) and Starcloud. Previously Managing Director at CIBC World Markets and SVP at Oppenheimer & Co. On staff at Harvard Business School since 2018, teaching entrepreneurship through HBS Field X and serving as Staff Advisor to Harvard Ventures. MBA from Columbia Business School, studied at Trinity College Oxford.
Lionheart Ventures is a global seed-stage firm focused on what they call 'mitigating civilizational risk' through transformative technologies. They invest in companies that defend and enhance human flourishing, agency, and resilience. Their two main verticals are transformative AI and frontier mental health technologies.
On the AI side, they were early investors in Anthropic and also back Softmax (organic alignment), Goodfire, Gray Swan (AI safety and security), Piramidal (neuroimaging foundation models), and Lucid Computing. The broader portfolio includes Calm (mental health), Charm Industrial (carbon removal), and deep tech bets like Perseus Defense and Starcloud.
Matthew has over 22 years in finance. He was Managing Director at CIBC World Markets and SVP at Oppenheimer & Co. He's a founding partner of Lionheart Ventures, a partner at Sentire Ventures, and an Investor & Advisor at New Generation. He has an MBA from Columbia Business School and studied at Trinity College, Oxford.
He's been on staff at HBS since 2018, where he teaches entrepreneurship through HBS Field X, a course that helps second-year grad students build startups. He also serves as Staff Advisor to Harvard Ventures. He was recruited in 2015 to help build the program and works at the intersection of the Harvard Ventures and Y Combinator ecosystems.
His notable deep-tech investments include Anthropic (early backer), Perseus Defense (YC S25, building affordable guided micro-missile pods at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions), and Starcloud (orbital data centers that launched the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space). He also invests through Sentire Ventures in companies like Gamalon Labs and Droplette.
He backs builders before there's proof and sometimes before there's even a category. After 6+ years evaluating founders at HBS and investing across AI, defense, and space tech, he focuses on conviction-based investing in frontier technology where traditional metrics don't exist yet.
