Rebecca Liao is Co-Founder and CEO at Saga AI Labs, an AI hyperscaling platform building the standard for synthetic relationships through Character AI Agents powered by major IP. These agents represent a fundamental shift in how audiences engage with games, entertainment, and sports—living across social platforms to interact with fans wherever they already spend their time. Since its launch in early 2024, Saga has processed over 23 million transactions across its protocol worth $2b+ in the aggregate.
She is also Co-Founder and CEO of Saga.xyz, an infrastructure protocol for automatically scaling blockchains, which was acquired by dao5 in 2026 and operates as part of the dao5 ecosystem.
Before Saga, Rebecca was an early team member at Globality, a SoftBank-backed AI unicorn transforming the procurement of professional services, where she served as Director of Business Development and Head of Asia.
She also co-founded Skuchain, serving as COO before joining the company’s Board of Advisors. Skuchain pioneered blockchain infrastructure for global trade and was named a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer in 2019. In 2020, the World Trade Organization recognized Skuchain as one of the world’s top three blockchain companies in trade and supply chain finance. During her tenure as COO, the platform grew to more than $5 billion in annual transaction volume.
She is currently Advisor to Sommelier Protocol, where she is designing their DAO to optimize for governance, platform growth & regulatory compliance. She is also a Fellow at the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, where she produces and hosts the #global-public-policy podcast.
She was a member of President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, advising on China, technology and Asia economic policy. She also served on Secretary Clinton’s foreign policy team for her 2016 presidential campaign, responsible for Asia trade and economic policy.
She began her career as an international corporate attorney at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP and Fenwick & West LLP. She represented clients in Asia, North America and Europe across a variety of industries, including Internet, mobile, semiconductors, enterprise software, energy, advertising technology, consumer technology and finance. Her work focused on domestic and cross-border transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity investments, venture financings, debt financings and public offerings of debt and equity. She also regularly advised public and private companies on corporate governance and securities law compliance.
Rebecca is also a writer and China analyst. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Nikkei Asia, The National Interest, Bloomberg View, n+1, Democracy Journal, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Times Literary Supplement, Chinafile, The Diplomat, Huffington Post, Dissent Magazine, The New Inquiry, the LA Review of Books, The China Story Journal, Tea Leaf Nation, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Classical Voice. She regularly comments on China for Politico, Deutsche Welle and Channel NewsAsia and has also appeared on HuffPost Live and SiriusXM Radio.
A graduate of Stanford University, where she studied Economics, and Harvard Law School, she serves on the Board of Advisors of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and is a Co-Chair of the Brookings Society. In the wake of rising anti-Asian hate, she co-founded, chairs and serves as an Executive Producer at The ACTION Project, a creative agency of Asian American Academy and Emmy Award-recognized creatives and leaders in entertainment, law, technology, business, education, and journalism leveraging our creative talent to shape the national narrative around our diverse community. She serves on the Board of Directors of Words Without Borders, Voices of Music and the Wagner Society of Northern California. She is also a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations.
Rebecca is a ballet dancer. Follow performance dates, rehearsal sneak peeks and life in the studio on her Instagram.