Matt Kummell is an American executive and strategist who has held senior roles across management consulting, hedge funds, and the digital asset industry. His career includes positions at prominent firms such as Bain & Company, Citadel, Citi, and Digital Currency Group. He serves as the Chief Commercial Officer at the NEAR Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the development of the NEAR Protocol. ^[1]​

Education

Kummell earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Following his undergraduate studies, he attended The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he graduated in 2006 with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in General Management. ^[2]​

Career

Kummell worked at PeopleSoft (later acquired by Oracle) from August 1998 to July 2004, holding roles spanning marketing program management, technical pre-sales, and implementation consulting in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the summer of 2005, he was a summer associate at Booz Allen Hamilton in London. From July 2006 to July 2009, Kummell worked at Bain & Company as a case team leader. He joined SAC Capital in July 2009 as director of portfolio manager development and strategic planning and analysis, focusing on assessment, coaching, and performance monitoring processes for equity long/short investment teams, while also working with leadership on business planning and potential investments. During this period, he also served as a board member at Derivix Corporation from March 2010 to January 2012.

In 2013, Kummell held a performance analytics manager role at Balyasny Asset Management in New York, supporting talent development initiatives, coaching, and developing internal reporting tools. From September 2013 to June 2015, he was a managing director at Citadel, overseeing programs in portfolio oversight, training, and professional development for investment staff. He founded Focal Point Insights, LLC in October 2016 and ran the firm until January 2018, advising investment managers on business strategy and operational improvements. From January 2018 to April 2021, he worked at Citi as head of North America for business advisory services, leading an investment management consulting function and producing research-based materials for clients.

Kummell joined Digital Currency Group in April 2021 as senior vice president of strategy, a position he held until July 2025. He also served as an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth from January 2020 to March 2025. In 2023, he was a board member at CoinDesk, and from January 2024 to October 2025, he served as a board member at Grayscale Investments, while also serving on the board of Foundry from December 2023 to June 2025. In July 2025, Kummell became chief commercial officer at the NEAR Foundation, where his work has focused on commercial strategy, partnerships, and go-to-market planning related to NEAR Protocol and its ecosystem. ^{[2] [3]}

Interviews

Investing in Intents

In January 2026, Kummell (NEAR Foundation) appeared on The Rollup podcast alongside Haseeb Qureshi and Avichal Garg to discuss the “intents economy” and its role in improving cross-chain payments and interoperability. The conversation covered how fragmented payment systems create friction for users, where value tends to accrue across the crypto stack, the competitive dynamics of intents infrastructure, and how intents could expand beyond token swaps into broader transaction types, including increased institutional participation and future integration with automated trading systems and AI-driven workflows. ^[4]

Panels

AI Agent Economy

In September 2025, Kummell (NEAR Foundation) participated in a webinar hosted by The Tie and moderated by Sacha Ghebali (The Tie), alongside Stefano Bury (Virtuals) and Ben Synder (elizaOS). The discussion focused on how blockchain infrastructure can support an emerging AI agent economy, including market expectations for AI and blockchain convergence, the role of specialized AI agents in generating actionable insights for both retail and institutional users, and the need for scalable, interoperable systems; the panel also covered developments such as NEAR’s performance targets, updates to elizaOS tooling, Virtuals’ work on agent commerce protocols, and the importance of partnerships and research collaborations shaping future adoption. ^[5]