Chris Lyons

Chris Lyons is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm, where he spent over a decade reshaping how culture and capital intersect. Starting as Chief of Staff to co-founder Ben Horowitz in 2013, he rose to General Partner by 2021 and founded the Cultural Leadership Fund (CLF) in 2018 - Silicon Valley's first VC fund composed entirely of Black Limited Partners, uniting athletes, musicians, and entertainers as investors in frontier technology. A former sound engineer trained under Grammy-winning producer Jermaine Dupri, Lyons brings a rare cross-industry fluency to tech investing, bridging entertainment, sports, Web3, and enterprise software. As of early 2026, he announced his departure from a16z to launch his own fund, citing the AI revolution as the defining moment to build independently.