# Chase Kim

> Chase Kim is a startup founder who spent years deep inside Sendbird, the messaging infrastructure company powering conversations for DoorDash, Reddit, and Hinge, where he led the forward deployment team during Sendbird's critical 2024 pivot into AI agents for customer experience. In 2026, he co-founded Light Anchor (YC P26) with Sangha Park to build fully autonomous e-commerce brands run entirely by AI agents, betting that the future of consumer business is capped by compute, not headcount.

- **Role:** Co-Founder at Light Anchor
- **Organizations:** Light Anchor, Sendbird
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Information Systems Technology (IST), Penn State University
- **Known for:** Led forward deployment and AI agent product teams at Sendbird during its 2024 pivot into AI customer experience, Helped scale Sendbird's AI agent platform serving major brands including DoorDash, Reddit, Hinge, and Paytm, Co-founded Light Anchor (YC P26), accepted into Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch

## Career timeline

- **2013-2016** — Sendbird (YC W16) founded by John S. Kim and co-founders; Sendbird begins building messaging infrastructure
- **2020-2024** — Chase Kim joins Sendbird, rising to Head of Forward Deployment as the company scales to 290 employees and $270M+ in funding
- **2024** — Leads Sendbird's AI agent product team during the company's major pivot into omnichannel AI agents for customer experience
- **2025-2026** — Meets co-founder Sangha Park at Sendbird; the two leave together to start Light Anchor
- **2026** — Co-founds Light Anchor (YC P26) with Sangha Park, building fully autonomous AI-run e-commerce brands

## Achievements

- Led forward deployment and AI agent product teams at Sendbird during its 2024 pivot into AI customer experience
- Helped scale Sendbird's AI agent platform serving major brands including DoorDash, Reddit, Hinge, and Paytm
- Co-founded Light Anchor (YC P26), accepted into Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch
- Built AI-run consumer brands operating entirely via specialized AI agents (CEO, GM, Marketing, Engineering functions)

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Light Anchor accepted into Y Combinator's Spring 2026 (YC P26) batch, with Harj Taggar as primary YC partner
- **2026-01** — Light Anchor launched, operating multiple autonomous e-commerce stores managed entirely by AI agents

## Links

- Website: https://www.lightanchor.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chasingjohnn/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/chasingjohnnn

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/chase-kim
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-27