Elizabeth Harkavy

Harkavy earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and computer science and a master’s degree in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. She worked at Facebook, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Goldman Sachs; at JPL she researched using reinforcement learning to optimize a delay-tolerant network node, which she presented at the IEEE Aerospace Conference.⁠[1][2][2][1]

Before joining a16z crypto, she was a founding engineer at Corsali (later renamed Vana), a venture-backed full-stack machine learning platform powered by highly educated workers who label data to earn crypto from their phones.⁠[1]

Harkavy, Eddy Lazzarin, and Arianna Simpson published “7 Essential Ingredients of a Metaverse” on a16z’s Future, discussing the buzz around the term “metaverse” since its coinage in the 1990s, especially during the pandemic and after Facebook renamed itself Meta, and attempting to define where a metaverse differs from, say, an ordinary online game.⁠[3][3][3]

Harkavy and Chris Dixon coauthored an article announcing that a16z crypto was leading the seed round of Catena Labs. Led by Circle cofounder Sean Neville, Catena Labs is building a new financial system for AI agents that lets trusted software agents send stablecoins around the world with near-instant finality and very low fees. The article argued that existing payment rails assume a human is on one end of every transaction, delaying settlement, charging high fees, and flagging automated activity as fraud, which limits what AI agents can do.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

In an a16z crypto team roundtable on the intersection of AI and crypto, Harkavy, as an investment partner, presented on AI monetization models.⁠[5][5]

Harkavy and Guy Wuollet coauthored an article announcing that a16z crypto was buying $15 million of BABY, the token of the Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon. Founded by David Tse and Fisher Yu, Babylon plans to expand into lending through its trustless vaults architecture, allowing Bitcoin to be used as collateral in DeFi without wrapping or custodians.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

Harkavy, Guy Wuollet, and Jay Drain coauthored an article announcing that a16z crypto was leading the $2.5 million seed round of Kairos, a unified trading terminal for prediction markets. Kairos was founded by Jay Malavia and Zayd Alzein; the article argued that prediction markets have grown from a niche research phenomenon into a product category attracting broader participation, but that trading tools have not kept pace.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7]

Harkavy, Chris Dixon, and Gabriel Vasquez cosigned an article announcing that Andreessen Horowitz was leading the first funding round of AI lab Conway ResearchConway ResearchConway Research is an artificial intelligence lab founded by Sigil Wen that works on efficient models, inference engines, and personal AI that runs on devices users already own; its first product is Underdog, a locally run personal assistant. In October 2026, Andreessen Horowitz announced that it was leading the company’s first funding round.Open the full entry, founded by Sigil Wen, whose first product, Underdog, is a personal AI that runs on users’ own devices.⁠[8][8][8]

As of October 2026, Harkavy is a partner on the a16z crypto investment team, based in San Francisco, focusing on “web 2.5,” picks-and-shovels projects, and decentralized infrastructure.⁠[1][2][8]

X: Public account: https://x.com/liz_harkavy (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-harkavy-322bba177/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]

a16z crypto: Official website: https://a16zcrypto.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]