Azuki’s Steve Chung and a $10M institutional push

The Block taps ex‑Azuki COO Steve Chung as CEO and takes another $10M from Foresight Ventures, doubling down on an institutional data, research, and AI‑driven media pivot.

The Block’s decision to install former Azuki COO Steve Chung as CEO, backed by an extra $10 million from Foresight Ventures, is a clear signal: crypto media is going fully institutional, with AI and TradFi squarely in the frame. It is a sharp pivot from surviving crypto winters and ownership scandals to competing head‑on with Bloomberg‑style data and research platforms for hedge funds, banks, and asset managers.

Chung steps into the role after a career that runs directly through Wall Street, legacy media, and Web3 IP.

He started at Goldman Sachs in New York, moved on to become Chief Growth Officer at Fox Corporation and Chief Digital Officer at Fox Television Stations, served as CEO of CJ ENM America, and most recently ran operations at Azuki, a blue‑chip NFT brand built around anime‑style decentralized IP. That mix of capital markets, media distribution, and crypto culture is exactly what The Block’s owners appear to be buying.

Larry Cermak, who became CEO in 2023 after Foresight Ventures acquired roughly 80% of The Block in a $60 million deal, will slide into a President role focused on research, data, and product rather than day‑to‑day operations. “Steve is the right operator to take The Block from category leader to global market leader,” Cermak said in the official release, framing the move as a scale‑up moment rather than a handover forced by stress.

Foresight’s new $10 million injection, announced alongside the hire, is meant to fund exactly that scale‑up.

Since 2022, the Singapore‑based firm has been deploying successive $10 million accelerators and strategic investments across Web3 infrastructure, AI, and Bitcoin Ordinals, and media is part of the stack: The Block is supposed to be the distribution and data layer that institutional LPs and portfolio companies lean on for market intelligence. PR copy is explicit about where this goes: using the fresh capital to “scale institutional research and data offerings, expand its enterprise business, and deepen its role as a critical information and data provider within the global digital asset ecosystem.”

On X, sentiment over the past day has been cautious but curious rather than euphoric.

Foresight‑aligned news account @WuBlockchain summarized the move in Chinese, emphasizing that Chung “曾任Fox、CJ ENM America 等公司高管，并担任NFT 项目Azuki COO,” and highlighting that Cermak will stay on to lead research and product, which calmed some concerns about editorial continuity. Another industry account amplified the PR line that The Block will now sit “at the intersection of crypto, finance, and AI,” positioning Chung as the operator who understands all three cultures. Binance’s @BinanceSquare news feed echoed Foresight’s framing, calling the move a push to “accelerate institutional expansion” rather than a simple leadership reshuffle.

The deeper question is what kind of media product emerges when a crypto‑native newsroom becomes a line item on a venture portfolio whose strategy is explicitly geared toward institutional monetization.

Foresight already controls the cap table and is now writing another $10 million check; Chung’s mandate is to build a global enterprise business on top of that. That almost certainly means more paywalled research, richer datasets, and bespoke products for funds and corporates—and less emphasis on chasing retail clicks. From a market‑structure point of view, that’s rational: crypto is institutionalizing, the big fees sit with professional clients, and the most valuable content is data‑driven, time‑sensitive research, not explainers.

But it also raises familiar concerns about independence and conflict of interest.

The Block is still working through reputational scars from its earlier exposure to Alameda/FTX money, which led to a change of ownership and Cermak’s initial appointment as CEO. Now, with a single venture firm doubling down financially and strategically, critics on X are already asking whether coverage of Foresight portfolio companies and themes—like AI‑crypto convergence or specific accelerator projects—can stay arm’s‑length. The fact that Cermak remains in charge of research and product is widely seen as a partial safeguard, but institutional clients will likely demand stricter governance around disclosures and firewalls than retail readers ever did.

From Chung’s side, his track record suggests he will lean into IP, brand, and distribution as much as data.

At Fox and CJ ENM America, his remit was to build digital businesses and global reach across traditional and streaming channels. At Azuki, he worked at the frontier of NFT‑based media franchises and decentralized IP, where community and liquidity matter as much as content. Bringing that playbook to The Block means you can expect more cross‑format output—video, events, B2B education—designed around institutional buyers but powered by crypto‑native culture. It is the media equivalent of moving IP on‑chain: trying to wrap research, data, and brand into a single, leverageable asset.

In the short term, the move is a bet that there is room for at least one fully crypto‑native “Bloomberg for digital assets,” and that the window to build it is now, before banks and legacy data vendors completely capture the category.

If Chung executes, The Block could become the default terminal for funds trading liquid tokens, stablecoins, and eventually tokenized real‑world assets. If he does not, the platform risks being squeezed between free on‑chain data dashboards and heavyweight incumbents who are already feeding crypto price and derivatives data into existing terminals. Either way, the appointment and the $10 million check confirm what the market already knows: crypto media is no longer just about news; it is infrastructure.