General Catalyst names Alexis Black Björlin as chief strategy officer

General Catalyst Names Alexis Black Björlin Chief Strategy Officer

General Catalyst appointed Alexis Black Björlin as Chief Strategy Officer, bringing in a technology executive with 25 years of experience across optics, semiconductors, networking, and AI infrastructure.

Black Björlin previously served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of DGX Cloud at Nvidia, where she built the company's cloud business and scaled its internal multi-cloud infrastructure into one of the world's largest AI fleets. Before that, she was Vice President of Infrastructure at Meta, overseeing hardware and software systems designed together, including AI platforms, compute and storage infrastructure, and custom silicon projects.

At General Catalyst, she will work across the firm's portfolio companies, helping them improve efficiency in large-scale AI systems and develop the economic infrastructure needed for widespread AI deployment.

The Case for Distributed Infrastructure

Black Björlin said she joined General Catalyst at a moment when the world is undertaking the largest infrastructure buildout in human history. Decisions made now about energy, computing capacity, and AI system access will influence economic development for decades, she said.

Her career has focused on designing and scaling systems across multiple technology layers. She believes that co-designing systems across optics, silicon, networking, high-performance computing, and cloud infrastructure has become its own discipline.

"I'm committed to building toward distribution, not concentration," Black Björlin said in a statement.

Background and Board Experience

Earlier in her career, Black Björlin led Intel's Optical Systems Division as Senior Vice President and General Manager, overseeing businesses in Ethernet networking, high-performance computing, and silicon photonics. She spent eight years as President of Source Photonics, building an optoelectronics manufacturing and foundry business across China and Taiwan.

She holds a bachelor's degree in Materials Science from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has served on the boards of Digital Realty, Astera Labs, Celestial AI, and the Global Semiconductor Association.

What General Catalyst Sees in the Hire

General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja said Black Björlin's expertise spans power generation, GPU infrastructure, foundation models, and agentic systems-areas the firm is actively investing in.

Taneja said her background running straight through the infrastructure layers of AI made her a fit for helping portfolio companies operate at those same layers and push efficiency forward.

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