Albert Wenger

At 18, Wenger won the German national computer science competition. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, majoring in economics and computer science, and later earned a Ph.D. in Information Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).⁠[1][2]

Before joining USV, Wenger founded or co-founded five companies, including a management consulting firm in Germany, a hosted data analytics company, a technology subsidiary of the online bank Telebanc (later E*Trade Bank), an early-stage investment firm, and DailyLit, a service co-founded with his wife that delivers books in installments by email or RSS; he also managed technology projects for the startup Tacoda and for Telebanc.⁠[1][1][1]

Wenger was president of the social bookmarking site del.icio.us through its sale to Yahoo, and invested as an angel in Etsy and Tumblr.⁠[3]

USV announced that it was formally bringing Wenger on as a venture partner. USV co-founder Fred WilsonFred WilsonFred Wilson is an American venture capitalist, co-founder and partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), and earlier co-founder, with Jerry Colonna, of the internet investment firm Flatiron Partners. He has written the blog AVC since 2003, chaired Etsy’s board for many years, and is a director of Coinbase.Open the full entry wrote that Wenger had been a friend and advisor to the firm from the very start and had attended nearly all of its events and annual meetings; already a board member of Etsy, he would continue to work with Wilson on the Etsy investment and represent USV on the board of its next investment.⁠[4][4][4][4]

The USV 2016 fund had $175 million in capital commitments and five investing partners: Brad BurnhamBrad BurnhamBrad Burnham is an American venture capitalist who co-founded the New York venture capital firm Union Square Ventures (USV) with Fred Wilson in 2003, after working at AT&T and its venture capital arm and co-founding the ad technology company TACODA; he has long publicly advocated net neutrality and opposed the abuse of software patents. Since October 2026 he has moved to continuing support of USV and is no longer listed on its core investment team.Open the full entry, Fred Wilson, Wenger, Andy WeissmanAndy WeissmanAndy Weissman is a New York venture capitalist who has been a partner at Union Square Ventures (USV) since 2011 and earlier co-founded the technology company and investment platform betaworks; when USV announced its new funds in October 2026, he moved to continuing support of the firm and its portfolio companies and is no longer listed on the core investment team.Open the full entry and John ButtrickJohn ButtrickJohn Buttrick is a New York venture capitalist who has been a partner at Union Square Ventures (USV) since 2010 and has invested in a number of fintech companies; earlier he was a mergers and acquisitions partner at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, and he chairs the board of the environmental group Environmental Advocates of New York. Since October 2026 he has moved to continuing support of USV and is no longer listed on its core investment team.Open the full entry. The fund’s key man provision, previously focused on the founders Wilson and Burnham, was changed to focus on Wenger and Weissman, who took on an increased leadership role and led more investments in that fund cycle.⁠[5][5][5][5]

Wenger, together with Brad Burnham, Fred Wilson, Andy Weissman and John Buttrick, published a post on the USV website stating that this was the first presidential election during USV’s existence in which the firm endorsed a candidate, Hillary Clinton; the post argued that the benefits of technology and globalization had not been evenly distributed and called for an open, respectful and rational dialogue grounded in science to deal with climate change and the consequences of new technologies such as artificial intelligence.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

Wenger and Gigi Danziger co-founded HudsonUP, a basic income pilot in the city of Hudson, New York. The program provides selected residents with $500 a month for five years; since 2020, three cohorts totaling 128 Hudson residents have been selected, 25 of whom received their final payment in September 2025; the Jain Family Institute and principal investigator Leah Hamilton conducted an independent study of participants from 2021 to 2025.⁠[7][7][8][8][8][8]

Wenger and Gigi Danziger signed the Statement on Superintelligence, which calls for a pause on the development of superintelligence. He wrote that the two had held off on supporting earlier “pause AI” appeals in the hope that frontier labs would make more progress on alignment, but that over the past month capabilities had been pushed far beyond what anyone was prepared for; signing a petition was a small act, but not speaking up now seemed clearly wrong.⁠[9][9][9][9]

In the same post he wrote that the two had for years funded research on both climate and the risks of superintelligence: on the climate side, work on solar radiation management and Arctic cloud thinning; on the AI side, they supported the launch of ValuesLab, were early contributors to the Cosmos Institute, and have helped fund the lab of Erik Hoel, author of The World Behind the World.⁠[9][9][9][9]

USV announced $900 million in new funds and a team reorganization: the core investment team consists of new members together with Fred Wilson, Rebecca KadenRebecca KadenRebecca Kaden is an American venture capitalist and a managing partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV). She joined the firm in 2017 and since 2026 has been one of its four active general partners.Open the full entry, Nick GrossmanNick GrossmanNick Grossman is an American venture capitalist and a general partner at the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), focusing on technologies such as crypto networks and AI agents that could reshape large markets. He began his career in urban planning and open-source civic technology and joined USV in 2012.Open the full entry and Nikhil Raman, while Wenger, Andy Weissman, John Buttrick and Brad Burnham continue supporting USV and its portfolio companies.⁠[10][10]

Wenger is the author of The World After Capital. The book argues that technological progress keeps shifting what is scarce for humanity: for foragers it was food, in the agrarian age land, and after the industrial revolution capital; digital technologies are shifting scarcity once more, and society must learn to live in a world in which the only scarcity is attention.⁠[3][11][11]

The book’s website always offers a free version, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, and the book is now in its second edition; a German edition is published by Piper Verlag and a Chinese edition by Cheers Publishing. The site also offers two question-answering tools, one powered by OpenAI GPT and one based on AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry’s Sonnet 3.7, for exploring concepts in the book such as universal basic income.⁠[12][12][12][12][13][13]

Wenger’s investments at USV have included Etsy, Twilio and MongoDB. He served on the boards of Clickable, a platform for managing online advertising, and Maptuit, a provider of real-time navigation, and was a board observer at Etsy.⁠[2][1]

Wenger and Gigi Danziger co-founded Eutopia, which runs a set of projects in the Hudson Valley, including the community learning hub The Spark of Hudson, the basic income pilot HudsonUP, the affordable housing project Hudson Dots for local residents, and Wally Farms, a 1,000-acre climate-action farm serving as a hub for independent farm businesses.⁠[7][14][14][14]

In October 2026, Wenger started a discussion group at The Spark of Hudson on “How to Live a Good Life,” with almost twenty people attending the first session.⁠[15][15]

Wenger writes about technology, science, philosophy and more on his personal blog Continuations, whose tagline is “Heading towards the knowledge age” and which has about 2,100 posts. He is also a member of Edge and answered its 2018 annual question.⁠[3][16][16][17]

Personal website: https://continuations.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

The World After Capital: Official website: https://worldaftercapital.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

X: Public account: https://x.com/albertwenger (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

Union Square Ventures: Official website: https://www.usv.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Eutopia: Official website: https://eutopia.global/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]