Laetitia de Cayeux builds and backs technologies that move humanity forward. For more than two decades she has been at the crucial node of one breakthrough frontier after another — from the first U.S. company dedicated to human egg freezing, which helped revolutionize women’s fertility, to beamed energy for space propulsion at Escape Dynamics, named one of Scientific American’s “World Changing Ideas,” to the first investment in cell towers in space when it was still a paper-napkin concept, now delivering connectivity from orbit. An early investor in SpaceX, she is the Founder and CEO of CEO of Global Space Ventures, through which she funds and accelerates pioneers across space, AI, and biotechnology. She serves on the board of XPRIZE, served on the U.S. Defense Science Board by appointment of the Secretary of Defense, and continues to support national security programs, including through NATO. The thread through it all: a conviction that audacious technology, pointed in the right direction, is the most powerful force for expanding human possibility and for securing peace.
There is a story behind each of those frontiers. The egg-freezing pioneer was born of an award-winning business plan Laetitia co-authored at Harvard Business School, winner of the school’s business plan contest more than 20 years ago. Escape Dynamics, which she co-founded and led as President, earned a place among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in space and saw its beamed-energy technology onboarded onto NASA’s technology roadmap in 2015. And the paper-napkin bet came full circle in 2025, when satellite-to-phone service went commercially live at scale, through Lynk, the pioneer she was first to back, and through SpaceX’s own direct-to-cell constellation, a concept she had long championed to its leadership. Today, hundreds of millions of people can text from places no cell tower reaches.
Her conviction that strength secures peace extends to national security service at the
highest levels. On the Defense Science Board, Laetitia led and shaped task forces on
the technologies that will define the next era of deterrence. She serves on the NATO
Maritime Unmanned Systems Innovation Advisory Board, served on the Truman
Advisory Council of the Truman Center for National Policy, and is a security fellow of the Truman National Security Project. She has briefed the U.S. Senate on commercial
space and national security, served on U.S. congressional task forces on innovation and Council on Foreign Relations study groups, and chaired policy discussions ranging from the future of the Space Force to U.S.-China relations. She holds a Top Secret (TS/SCI) security clearance
At XPRIZE, Laetitia helps guide and govern the world’s leading engine of moonshot
competitions, from the $100M Carbon Removal XPRIZE launched with Elon Musk, to XPRIZE Healthspan, the largest prize in history, and a visionary bid to close the gap between how long we live and how well we live that sits squarely alongside her own biotech investing, to the Future Vision XPRIZE, which enlists the world’s storytellers to imagine hopeful, technology-enabled futures. She also serves on the board of the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath), and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, and Women Corporate Directors.
Laetitia’s path to the frontier wasn’t a straight line: she soared in some chapters,
stumbled and learned in others, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. She began in global finance and loved it: Asian equity mandates for Paribas in China, cross-border M&A at Goldman Sachs in London, and investment roles at TPG-Axon Capital and Renaissance Technologies before founding her own fund, earning recognition as an Institutional Investor “Rising Star” and a Women’s Forum “Rising Talent.” The entrepreneurial leap came only once she had built her own financial footing, and, just as important, real-world experience. She holds MBAs from ESSEC (France) and Harvard Business School.
An American by choice, with deep French roots, Laetitia has lived and worked across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She is a proud mother to Kinga Shuilong and Ronin Phi, and the granddaughter of French scientist André de Cayeux de Sénarpont,for whom the Cailleux crater on the moon is named. Yet she believes the moonshot mindset is not inherited but built — hers took root early, and she works to share it as widely as she can, convinced that everyone has a gift worth contributing to the world.