Yat Siu Keynote Speaker

Yat Siu is a veteran technology entrepreneur and angel investor based in Hong Kong.

Presently the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in blockchain and gaming, behind the games The Sandbox, Crazy Kings and Crazy Defense Heroes. Yat Siu is also the founder and CEO of Outblaze, a tech conglomerate specialising in cloud, gaming, and smartphone software.

Yat began his career at Atari Germany, before moving to Hong Kong in 1995 to establish Hong Kong Cybercity, the first free web page and email provider in Asia. In 1998 he moved on to set up Outblaze, a web-based multilingual white label communication and collaboration service. Yat Siu’s steady leadership and vision steered Outblaze through the Dotcom Bubble and it emerged as an award-winning world leader in tech innovation.

In 2009, Yat sold Outblaze’s messaging unit to IBM and its assets helped open the first cloud computing laboratory in Hong Kong. This move pivoted Outblaze to become an incubator of projects and companies that develops digital entertainment services and products. One of those incubated companies is Animoca Brands, which Yat Siu created in 2014.

As an early advocate for the use of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the gaming industry, Yat steered Animoca Brands in 2008 to focus on blockchain technology and NFTs. Seeing the potential of decentralised apps and assets, Yat Siu wants gamers to enjoy true ownership of their own game assets, data, and, consequently, equity. Today, Animoca Brands delivers digital property rights to the world’s gamers and Internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies, and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open metaverse.

Animoca Brands was recently valued at $5.9 billion. It operates a series of NFT-centric subsidiaries and products, with investments in over 170 blockchain-related companies, making it one of the largest blockchain portfolios in the world.

A father of three and a frequent speaker at parenting, education and tech conferences, Yat observed a gap between what children are taught in Hong Kong schools and the pressing needs of our technology-dominant future. Collaborating with the Dalton School founders, Yat Siu set up the Dalton Learning Lab in 2017. An afterschool digital lab that focuses on fostering divergent thinking and developing useful, future-ready skills applicable to the real world. Yat is also the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology.

Yat Siu was named World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow and a Young Global Leader of Tomorrow. He has also earned numerous accolades for his contributions in business and society. This includes the Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the DHL/SCMP Awards, and recognition as Coindesk’s Most Influential 2022 and one of Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Notable People in Blockchain.

A classically trained musician, Yat is a member of the advisory board of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and a director of the Asian Youth Orchestra.