< The 2016 Tech 50

Demand for homes and offices in San Francisco has skyrocketed as trendsetters in that most trendy of technology clusters have shown a decided preference for the city over Silicon Valley to the south. Deborah Hopkins has gone with the flow, relocating to a San Francisco “satellite office” in May. She came to the Valley in 2010 to get close to the high-tech and venture financing communities, in keeping with her mission as chief innovation officer of Citigroup and CEO of its Citi Ventures investment vehicle. The latter, based in Palo Alto, is near such portfolio companies as Ayasdi, Pepperdata and Platfora (all in the big-data space). Downtown, Hopkins has Datameer (analytics), DocuSign (document management) and Square (remote payments) in closer proximity. The portfolio is a window on emerging innovation, which Hopkins, 61, has likened to surfing: “It looks easy, but it’s not,” and it’s all about being aware of coming, but unseen, waves. She believes technological change requires fresh management approaches and openness to experimentation and partnerships. “There is a lot of interesting debate going on around artificial intelligence and whether it’s creepy,” she says. “We were all scoffing at augmented reality, saying it was for games, but we’re actually playing around with that in our labs.” Citi partnered this year with virtual-reality design firm 8ninths, using Microsoft HoloLens headsets to, in the companies’ words, “reimagine financial trading in a mixed reality.” The idea is to augment common experience by overlaying digital tools on existing desktops. “That could be a highly effective way for our traders to operate,” says Hopkins, a former CFO of Boeing Co. and Lucent Technologies who since joining Citi in 2003 has been head of corporate strategy and M&A and chief operations and technology officer. In another partnership, with design firm IDEO, Citi has created collaborative environments to explore uses for new technology such as blockchain. “He who learns the most, wins,” Hopkins says. “Learning really comes from experimentation.”

 
The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 3. Lance Uggla Markit 4. Phupinder Gill CME Group Advisors and Their Clients Call for New Asset Classes in Model Portfolios Sponsored by BlackRock May 6, 2025 5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group

7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq 9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 12. David Craig Thomson Reuters

13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 18. David Rutter R3CEV

19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. 20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group

25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 26. David Gledhill DBS Bank 27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse 29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings 30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co.

31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence 32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp. 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz

37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 39. David Harding Winton Capital Management 40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 42. Jim Minnick eVestment

43. Stephane Dubois Xignite 44. Mazy Dar OpenFin 45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank 47. Jock Percy Perseus 48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions

49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 50. Pieter van der Does Adyen