Moritz Baier-Lentz

Moritz Baier-Lentz (born January 20, 1986) is a German-American venture capitalist. He is a partner and the head of gaming & interactive media at Lightspeed Venture Partners, leading the firm's investments in gaming and artificial intelligence, including foundation models for spatiotemporal reasoning (such as action policies and world models), as well as applications for generative media creation and agentic simulations in video games.

Previously, Baier-Lentz was a vice president in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs, where he founded and led the firm's gaming practice.

Early life and education

Baier-Lentz grew up as a first-generation high school graduate in rural Germany and spent his teenage years competitively playing Blizzard Entertainment's multiplayer action role-playing game Diablo II. He used a combination of proceeds from virtual goods sales and German national academic merit scholarships from Studienstiftung and DAAD to help finance his undergraduate and graduate studies.

Awards and professional memberships

In 2016 and 2017, Baier-Lentz was regarded by Forbes (U.S.) and Capital (Germany) as one of the most influential finance professionals in their 30 Under 30 and 40 Under 40 lists, respectively. In 2017, he joined the German-American Atlantik-Brücke and in 2023, he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and invited to participate as a delegate in the 54th and 55th Annual Meeting in Davos. Baier-Lentz holds an MBA and M.A. from Stanford University, and graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Career

Investment banking

After starting his career as a data scientist at IBM,

During his tenure as vice president, he advised gaming and technology corporations on over $300 billion in transaction volume across mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, venture capital, and other strategic transactions, including Dell's $67 billion acquisition of EMC and IBM's $34 billion purchase of Red Hat. where he invested into entrepreneurs who had led the creation of video games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Halo, Destiny, Overwatch, Valorant, Apex Legends, Sky, StarCraft II, and Warcraft III.

He scaled the firm to approximately $850 million in assets under management and to become the most active gaming lead investor in 2020, 2021, and 2022

In 2023 and 2024, Lightspeed has been the leading venture capital investor in gaming and interactive media globally; having led rounds of aggregated $162 million and $252 million across both years, respectively.

General Intuition

Baier-Lentz is a founding member of General Intuition, a frontier research lab building action policies and world models trained on proprietary video game data. In 2025, the startup raised a $133.7M Seed round led by Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst, after rumored to be walking away from a $500 million acquisition offer from OpenAI in 2024.

Gaming industry

CEO Forum and Lightspeed Advisory Council

Baier-Lentz hosts the annual CEO Forum at the Game Developers Conference with Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, and Sony—an "off-the-record gathering for the CEOs of the world's largest gaming and interactive media companies."

Attendees of the 2024 and 2025 conferences have included executives from companies such as Microsoft, Roblox, and Sony.

Game Theory

In June 2025, Baier-Lentz launched the video podcast series Game Theory: How Play Is Changing Everything in partnership with Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, featuring commentary from founders, CEOs, and presidents in the gaming industry on how the concept of play has shaped consumer behavior and technological innovation.Episode overview Episode Guest Role & Company Title 101 David Baszucki Co-founder and CEO of Roblox Play & the AI Revolution 102 Sarah Bond President of Microsoft Xbox Play & the Power of Anywhere 103 Walter Driver Co-founder and Co-CEO Scopely Play & the Learning Machine 104 Matthew Bromberg President and CEO of Unity Play & the Innovation Engine 105 John Hanke Founder and CEO of Niantic Play & the Real World 106 Strauss Zelnick Chairman and CEO of Take-Two Play & the Quest for Lasting ValueSource:

Game Changers

In partnership with Nasdaq, GamesBeat, and executive judges from the gaming and media industry, Baier-Lentz founded Game Changers, a yearly initiative to highlight 25 startups across gaming, interactive media, and artificial intelligence.

World Economic Forum

In his role as Young Global Leader and Davos delegate, Baier-Lentz advises the World Economic Forum on gaming, extended reality, governance aspects of artificial intelligence, and the convergence of frontier technologies.

Forbes

After originally making the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Finance category 2016, Baier-Lentz served as a judge for the Games category in 2024.

Speaking engagements

Baier-Lentz in 2024 at the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Baier-Lentz has been featured as a speaker at the World Economic Forum, Google, Nvidia GTC, Stanford University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Axios, South by Southwest, Slush, and the Game Developers Conference.

Personal life

Baier-Lentz and wife Alissa at the Berghotel Schatzalp in 2024.

Baier-Lentz is an Ironman and ultramarathon runner, including the 251-kilometer long, self-sufficient Marathon des Sables and the World Marathon Challenge (7 marathons on 7 continents within 7 days).