Winston Ma

Vice Chair / Chief Investment Officer | International Data Center Authority

Winston Ma is an investor, attorney, author and adjunct professor in the global digital economy. He is vice chair and chief investment officer at the International Data Center Authority (IDCA). He is one of a small number of native Chinese who have worked as investment professionals and practicing capital markets attorneys in both the United States and China.

Most recently, he was managing director and head of the North America Office for China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund. At CIC’s inception in 2008, he was among the first group of overseas hires by CIC, where he was a founding member of both CIC’s Private Equity Department and later the Special Investment Department for direct investing. He served leadership roles in the fund’s global investments involving financial services; technology, media and telecom; and energy and natural resources sectors, including the setup of WestSummit Capital, a cross-border growth capital fund in Silicon Valley, which was CIC’s first overseas tech investment.

Prior to that, Mr. Ma served as deputy head of equity capital markets at Barclays Capital, vice president at J.P. Morgan Investment Banking and corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

Mr. Ma is the author of China’s Mobile Economy (Wiley, 2016), Digital Economy 2.0 (2017 Chinese), The Digital Silk Road (2018 German), China’s AI Big Bang (2019 Japanese) and Investing in China (Risk Books, 2006). His new books are “The Hunt for Unicorns: How Sovereign Funds Are Reshaping Investment in the Digital Economy” (Wiley, 2020) and “The Digital War – How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain, and Cyberspace” (Wiley, 2021).

Mr. Ma has served on the boards of multinational listed and private companies. He is currently the chairman of the board of Nasdaq-listed Mountain & Co. I Acquisition Corp. (MCAAU), a European tech (special purpose acquisition company) SPAC. He is also the chairman of the advisory board at Open Mineral, the first financial technology business-to-business metal marketplace. Previously, he was a board member of Singapore-listed Noble Group. He was awarded the 2013 Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Mr. Ma earned his MBA from the University of Michigan Ross Business School (beta gamma sigma) and his master of laws from the New York University (NYU) School of Law (Hauser Global Scholar). He earned bachelor of science and bachelor of law degrees from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He is an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, teaching “Sovereign Investments & Regulations,” and a member of the NYU President’s Global Council since its establishment in 2013. In 2014, he received the NYU Distinguished Alumni Award. He is a chartered financial analyst.