Yi He

Yi He (Chinese: 何一; pinyin: Hé Yī, née Chinese: 何英; pinyin: Hé Yīng; born c. 1986) is a Chinese-born business executive. She is a co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and, since December 2025, has served as its co-chief executive officer (CEO), alongside Richard Teng.¹²

Previously, she served as Binance's chief marketing officer.³ Since August 2022 she has headed YZi Labs, formerly known as Binance Labs, a venture capital firm and family office associated with Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao that invests in Web3, artificial intelligence and biotechnology companies.⁴⁵

Yi He was born as He Ying (何英) in a rural village of Sichuan province in 1986. Both of her parents were school-teachers, and she entered primary school at the age of five, finishing near the top of her class. As a teenager, she worked part-time, first as a soft-drink promoter at 16, then for two months as manager of a bedding shop.

In 2006, she moved to Beijing to enroll in an in-service master's program in counselling psychology and obtained a national psychological-counsellor certificate. Finding the market limited, she left the field and spent two years as a class teacher at a private arts college in Lijiang.

Between 2012 and 2014 she hosted programmes such as 美丽目的地 and 有多远走多远 on Travel Satellite TV, as well as 北京新发现 on Beijing Television.⁶

In March 2014, she joined the cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin as vice-president and chief marketing officer, where she launched a billboard campaign in Times Square and recruited engineer Changpeng Zhao to the company.⁷

Leaving OKCoin in 2015, she accepted an offer from Yixia Technology (一下科技) to head marketing for its live-streaming apps 一直播, 秒拍 and 小咖秀. Among other initiatives, she secured a widely viewed live stream with South Korean actor Song Joong-ki that contributed to the company's reported valuation of around US$3 billion. She left Yixia in mid-2017 and later that year co-founded Binance with Zhao.

In 2017 He and Zhao co-founded Binance. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, she holds at least 10% of a Cayman Islands holding company associated with Binance and exercises broad influence over the firm's marketing and investment operations.³

In August 2022, amid what was described as a "crypto winter", Binance appointed He as head of Binance Labs, the company's venture capital and incubation arm.⁵

On 3 December 2025, Binance announced that He had been appointed co-CEO of the exchange, sharing the role with Richard Teng, who became sole CEO in 2023 after Zhao stepped down as part of a settlement with United States authorities over anti-money laundering violations.⁸⁹

Yi He is in a long-term relationship with Changpeng Zhao. They have been partners since 2014 and have three children together.⁶¹⁰