Steve W. Chung is an American media and technology executive based in Los Angeles, California, who was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the crypto news and research firm The Block in April 2026.[1]
Steve Chung earned an A.B. from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude (1997–2001). He later completed an MBA at Stanford University Graduate School of Business (2005–2007) and an AI for Senior Executives certificate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (February–August 2025). [4]
Chung has worked across the United States, South Korea and China, and speaks English and Korean at native or bilingual proficiency and Chinese at a limited working level.[4] He describes himself as a growth and transformation leader with start-up, IPO and Fortune 100 operating experience across media and entertainment, content and emerging platforms, specializing in direct-to-consumer (D2C) and business-to-business (B2B) growth on a global scale.[4]
Chung began his career at Goldman Sachs in New York, working there from July 2001 to June 2003.[5] He was hired as an analyst in the Investment Banking Division's Merger and Strategic Advisory Group, and later moved to a strategic group supporting the Equities Division, where he served as the sole analyst to five partners and worked on firm-wide initiatives.[4]
Between August 2006 and December 2007, Chung was an Investment Director at BlueRun Ventures in the San Francisco Bay Area.[4]
From December 2007 to November 2010, Chung served as Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Markets at CDNetworks, a publicly traded KOSDAQ content-delivery company, working across Seoul, San Jose and New York.[4] He was responsible for global strategy and mergers and acquisitions and headed the company's business in China, Japan, the United States and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In that capacity he led the acquisition of Panther Express and initiated the strategic conversations that led to KDDI's acquisition of CDNetworks.[4]
He then spent November 2010 to January 2012 as Managing Director at KIT digital in Beijing, where he headed the Asia Pacific region with full profit-and-loss responsibility, managing 200 employees across 10 offices.[4]
Chung was Chief Operating Officer of the image-sharing service We Heart It from February 2012 to February 2013 in the San Francisco Bay Area. [4] He founded the company with backing from a major global telecommunications operator, incubated it at Stanford's StartX accelerator, raised more than $40 million in funding, and took the company public as its CEO. Frankly, subsequently acquired by Engine Media, counted more than 200 NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox affiliates among its customers.[4]
Chung joined Fox in June 2018 as Chief Digital Officer of Fox Television Stations, a position he held until May 2021 in Los Angeles.[3] In that role he oversaw product across mobile apps, web, social, over-the-top (OTT) and video platforms, along with engineering, the digital newsroom, digital marketing and data, and he drove the creation of two streaming channels, LiveNOW and FOX SOUL. He describes Fox Television Stations as comprising 29 stations in 18 markets covering more than 39 percent of U.S. television homes.[4] He was subsequently the inaugural Chief Growth Officer of Fox Corporation from May 2021 to June 2022 in Los Angeles.[5]
Chung joined the South Korean entertainment group CJ ENM (KOSDAQ: 035760) as Global Chief Growth Officer from September 2022 to January 2023, based in Los Angeles.[4] In January 2023 he was promoted to Chief Global Officer and Co-CEO of America, overseeing all of CJ ENM's business outside Korea, including the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA, and serving as a board member of Fifth Season in the United States, the Thai joint venture True CJ Creations (formed with the CP Group and True Corporation), and Studio Dragon Japan.[4] Effective July 2023 he became sole CEO of CJ ENM America, holding the title of Chief Global Officer and CEO of America until May 2024.[3]
In June 2024, Chung became the inaugural Chief Operating Officer of Azuki, a Los Angeles-based NFT company built around anime-style decentralized intellectual property, a role he held until November 2025.[3][2] Working alongside the founding team, he oversaw strategic direction, entertainment partnerships, key initiatives and overall operations, and led a strategic effort to explore issuing a consumer stablecoin compliant with the GENIUS Act in partnership with the payments company Stripe.[4]
The Block appointed Chung as Chief Executive Officer in an announcement made on April 27, 2026, framing his hire as a step to accelerate the company's institutional expansion at the intersection of crypto, finance and AI.[5] He succeeded Larry Cermak, who moved into the role of President overseeing research, data and product.[1]
On his appointment, Chung said: "The next generation of market leaders in information services will be defined by trust, proprietary data, and direct relationships with institutional audiences. The Block has built a strong foundation across all three. The focus now is to scale that into a globally relevant platform for investors and decision-makers in digital assets, while applying AI to enhance the depth, speed, and utility of our insights."[1] He added that the company was "not reinventing the platform" but "taking what already works and enhancing it to become a powerful and indispensable global platform for the industry."[1]
