George Zeng
George Xian Zeng is the Chief Product Officer (CPO) of NEAR Protocol and the General Manager (GM) of NEAR AI [1] [2]. Appointed to the role in mid-2025, he leads the NEAR Foundation's strategic initiatives in decentralized and user-owned artificial intelligence [3] [4]. Before joining NEAR, Zeng was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the decentralized exchange dYdX and co-founded the social e-commerce company Moonship [1] [3]. His career also includes product leadership roles at Facebook, where he was instrumental in developing and scaling core advertising technologies [3] [2].
Education
George Zeng holds multiple advanced degrees from Ivy League institutions. He earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The Wharton School, with a focus on Technology and Healthcare. Prior to his business studies, he completed a Master of Science in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Arts (AB) in Economics with a focus on math, finance, and Chinese language and culture, from Princeton University. [2]
Career
Zeng's career spans entrepreneurship, product management at major technology firms, and executive leadership in the Web3 industry. He has founded multiple companies and is an active angel investor and startup advisor [1] [2].
NEAR Foundation
In mid-2025, George Zeng was appointed to a dual leadership role at the NEAR Foundation as Chief Product Officer of NEAR Protocol and General Manager of the newly formed NEAR AI division [1] [3]. While some reports initially announced his title as Chief Growth Officer (CGO), his official and public-facing roles are CPO and GM [4] [1].
As head of NEAR AI, Zeng is responsible for the foundation's strategic push into decentralized artificial intelligence, with a vision centered on creating "user-owned AI" [3]. His mandate involves leading the development of privacy-preserving AI products and infrastructure on the NEAR protocol, aiming to shift the ownership and control of AI agents from centralized corporations to individual users [3] [5].
Under his leadership, NEAR AI launched "IronClaw" in February 2026. IronClaw is an open-source, verifiable, and secure runtime environment designed for "always-on" AI agents. The project aims to solve the security, compliance, and data ownership challenges that hinder the deployment of autonomous AI systems in critical workflows. At the time of its launch, Zeng stated:
"AI agents are rapidly becoming part of core workflows, and critical questions around security, compliance, and data control remain unresolved. We’re extending NEAR AI’s commitment to secure, privacy-first infrastructure with IronClaw, giving developers and enterprises the foundation they need to deploy agentic AI systems responsibly without sacrificing control or transparency.” [5]
IronClaw operates within an encrypted Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and uses a defense-in-depth security model to isolate third-party tools, control network access, manage credentials securely, and prevent data exploitation. The system is designed to not collect any telemetry or analytics data, ensuring that user data remains within their local environment. [5]
dYdX
Prior to his role at NEAR, Zeng served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of dYdX, a prominent decentralized cryptocurrency exchange [1] [4]. Sources indicate his tenure as COO was between 2022 and late 2025 [2] [6]. This was not his first involvement with the company; he had previously served as an advisor and helper to dYdX from 2018 to 2019, during its earlier stages [2].
Entrepreneurial Ventures
Zeng has a significant background as a founder and chief executive of multiple technology startups.
Moonship
From 2018 to 2022, Zeng was the Co-founder and CEO of Moonship, a social e-commerce company [2]. Moonship provided social group buying tools for merchants on the Shopify platform. The company's mission was to help merchants acquire customers through organic social channels, thereby reducing their dependence on increasingly expensive paid advertising on platforms like Facebook. Speaking on the motivation for founding the company, Zeng noted his experience at Facebook's ad division:
"I built out the programmatic ad tech stack at Facebook and saw merchants spend 40-60% of their revenues on Facebook ads. We kept thinking that’s an absurd amount of money – and that it would be game changing if we can help merchants acquire customers via organic channels." [3]
To build Moonship, Zeng assembled a team of engineers with experience from major tech companies, including individuals who architected Facebook's search engine and former Google employees. [3]
AirCare Labs
From 2012 to 2014, Zeng co-founded AirCare Labs and served as its CEO and Product Lead. [2]
Groupon (China)
Early in his entrepreneurial career, in 2011, Zeng was involved in the international expansion of Groupon. He was a co-founder of the company's venture into China and was responsible for its business in Southern China as the Head of Sales for the region. [3] [2]
Facebook (Meta)
From 2014 to 2018, Zeng was a Product Lead at Facebook (now Meta) [2]. During this time, he played a key role in building and scaling several core products within Facebook's ad technology stack. His contributions included work on the Ads API, Dynamic Ads, and Dynamic Creative Optimization. His work was credited with growing the ad tech stack he managed from its inception to over $1 billion in revenue. [3]
Investing and Advisory Roles
In addition to his full-time roles, Zeng has been an active angel investor and startup advisor since 2014, identifying himself as a "Startup investor/helper" [1] [2]. His advisory experience includes work with dYdX from 2018 to 2019 and a consultant role at Anchorage Digital in 2018. He was also a member of South Park Commons, a collective of technologists and entrepreneurs, from 2024 to 2025. [2]
Public Engagement
Zeng is a public speaker at technology and Web3 industry events, including NEARCON, the official conference for the NEAR ecosystem. In his talks, he discusses the vision and development roadmap for NEAR AI, the future of user-owned AI agents, and a concept he refers to as "Agentic Commerce." [3]