Sébastien de Halleux

Matchday (ex Playfish)

Sebastien de Halleux has a 20-year track-record of launching high impact businesses around the world, leading them from idea to success. Sebastien is currently Co-Founder & Chief Gaming Officer at Matchday, building a new type of video game for football’s 5 billion fans using blockchain technologies and generative AI. Sebastien is also a founding General Partner at Graph Ventures, a global early stage fund with a portfolio of 300+ companies including Blue Apron, Ipsy, Dapper Labs and Regent Craft.

Most recently, Sebastien was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Capricorn, a pioneering investment group focused on scaling innovative solutions to persistent global problems, including key investments in Tesla, SpaceX, Planet Labs, Quantumscape and Joby Aviation; and founding COO of Saildrone, helping launch a category-defining company which revolutionized planetary data collection at sea, using wind and solar powered ocean drones. At the confluence of autonomy, big data and AI/ML, Saildrone is pursuing a vision called ‘The Quantified Planet’ to help better understand key planetary systems that affect humanity, such as extreme weather, ocean acidification, and global fisheries.

Formerly, Sebastien was Co-Founder and COO of Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social video games companies which was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2009 (Nasdaq:EA). Prior to founding Playfish, Sebastien helped launch Glu Mobile, an early pioneer in mobile games which IPO’ed in 2007 (Nasdaq:GLUU, later acquired by EA), and held innovation and strategy roles at Nokia and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Sebastien is the recipient of the 2012 EA Emerging Leaders Award, the 2011 Tech 100 award, the 2010 TechFellow award, and the 2003 Booz Allen Professional Excellence Award. His contribution in establishing a successful public-private partnership between Saildrone and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was recognized with the 2020 Ron Brown Excellence in Innovation Award and the 2018 US Department of Commerce Bronze Medal.

Sebastien has served on the boards of Saildrone, Samasource, Vittana, UWC-USA, the Solar Fuel Institute, and Trusted Family. Sebastien holds a Master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Imperial College London, is a Henry Crown Fellow at the US-based Aspen Institute, and a European Young Leader at Friends of Europe.