The Most Powerful Women in Banking NEXT No. 21, Stephanie Cherrin, J.P. Morgan Technology Ventures

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When you first meet Stephanie Cherrin, one of the immediate things that strikes you is her clarity of thinking—on what she does, why she does it and, even more, how she looks at the early-stage companies in which she might invest and their potential impact on the market.

The 38-year-old partner in J.P. Morgan Technology Ventures, the bank's under-the-radar technology investment arm, is charged with identifying and making investments in fintech and cybersecurity companies. Cherrin's demeanor—direct, candid and intentionally thoughtful about the process of investing—stands in sharp contrast to the bank's desire to remain rather opaque about how much it invests annually in startups, the number of deals it did in 2024, or the types of investments its tech venture team is considering this year. When asked, she declined to answer questions on all of this, citing company policy.

But placing bets on startups deemed to have potential significance for the financial industry is a hard secret to keep. JPMorganChase has "at least ~$500 million in their war chest and have invested in ~20+ deals where our paths have crossed," said Richard Crone, CEO of Crone Consulting in an email.

"Most are Series A–C rounds in fintech, AI, compliance, and enterprise software—in many cases as co-leads alongside tier-one smart-money VCs such as Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bessemer Venture Partners, depending on the deal context." One example Crone cited: J.P. Morgan co-led payment platform Slope's $65 million raise last year, "adding not just capital, but also a debt facility, distribution support, and a board observer seat."

Cherrin is nothing if not insatiably curious, and that applies to her appetite for exposure to different technology markets for investment. She spent 14 years in Israel, initially for college and then as a venture capitalist with Krypton Venture Capital investing in business-to-consumer (B2C) startups.

After Krypton, she did a four-year run as a principal at Porsche Ventures, where her focus largely centered on two areas of investment for the luxury car maker: investing in alternative car materials, fintech and technology companies that have adjacency to the value chain of selling, owning or reselling cars, and leveraging enterprise software that would increase Porsche's corporate efficiency. "While we make cars, we also run an organization, so enterprise software is really core to making [the company] as efficient and powerful as the vehicles," she said of her time at Porsche Ventures.

The desire to participate in a greater number of markets ripe for investment was what compelled Cherrin to eventually make the move from Porsche Ventures to JPMorganChase in May 2022. "It was an opportunity to go from a sector that I felt like I really understood, but didn't feel a part of, to an organization that spans so many different areas of the [technology] industry that I was interested in," she said.

When asked what she learned in her role at Porsche Ventures that has informed her investing strategy since, she said, "A good company for [one] corporation isn't always a good company, and a bad company for that specific corporation isn't always a bad company. Sometimes the lens of investment must be broader than the specific use case that your organization is looking at, and that applies in both directions."

Cherrin acknowledged the culture difference between JPMC and Porsche: "It's a very different culture. But I feel fortunate that my career has brought me across continents, ecosystems and industries, and there's a lot to learn from all of them. We pride ourselves [at JPMC] on our discipline and that we don't succumb to hype cycles, and we have an incredible organization of subject-matter experts that help us stay aligned to our core mission, which is the return on our investments." That internal intellectual capital has kept the inbound deal flow consistently high, which is as much as Cherrin would say about the 2024 and 2025 pace of deals.

Now residing in San Francisco and expecting her fourth child, Cherrin said the biggest thing she's learned when analyzing potential targets for investment: "The importance of getting to 'no' because it is oftentimes a more important answer than 'yes.'" —Holly Sraeel