What I’ve learned: Devang Thakkar, Global Head of Christie’s Ventures

I grew up in an art family. My mother is a painter, so while the education system in Mumbai drew me towards mathematics and computer science, I was always surrounded by art. Many years later, I was working at Microsoft as an engineer and cultivating painting as a hobby at home. My one-bedroom apartment in Seattle was filled with paintings, so I had to get a studio. I ended up getting a space that was the glass artist Dale Chihuly’s old studio, which I’ve had since 2007.

I was always interested in applying technology to the art world. In 2015, I joined Artsy, which was in its early stages. I loved the mission of making art accessible to anyone with an internet connection. I came to Christie’s in 2020 as an advisor, just as the pandemic was in full swing, and joined full-time in 2022 when we launched Christie’s Ventures to support early-stage companies working at the intersection of art and technology.

Christie’s Ventures was seeded after the record-breaking Beeple auction in March of 2021. Right after that sale, Christie’s was on the front page of almost every newspaper on earth. Our mailboxes were inundated with startup founders sending pitch decks and showing us what they were building. Founders were saying: You have been forward-thinking in terms of technology, you’re selling an NFT for $69.3 million, you should invest in my company.

We had hundreds of those emails on the first day and thousands within the first week. This was an aha moment where we started taking the idea of outside investment more seriously. We’ve been fortunate so far that we’ve gotten deal flow because of our brand as well as our technology leadership.

Christie’s Ventures has four pillars that inform our work. We started with Web3, and that included the landmark Beeple sale. Fintech is a key pillar for us because we’ve created very nuanced and sophisticated financial instruments for our clients to be able to transact and feel comfortable transacting at this level. Innovations like buy now, pay later are a huge new model of commerce, but Christie’s has been doing that for over 250 years in some capacity.

Hardware, or human computer interfaces, is another pillar. The way humans interact with technology is evolving quite rapidly and it has an impact on how we discover content. For example, we made an investment in proto holograms that allow people to see sculptures in three-dimensional, photorealistic fashion, and we expect other such innovations to follow. Lastly, we have most recently started investing in artificial intelligence. The technology world is rallying behind AI, and there are a lot of interesting opportunities coming up there.

One particular venture I’m proud of is a company called Echomark. It was founded in 2022 and uses invisible watermarks and artificial intelligence algorithms to personalise documents and emails for the recipient. If one of the personalised emails gets shared, the sender will know what source it came from, whether it was forwarded, screenshotted or printed. It makes us all better stewards of documents.

The wealth of knowledge here is incredible. Before coming to Christie’s, I didn’t realize the depth of knowledge and expertise our specialists have. I used to be a naive engineer who thought engineers were the smartest people on the planet, but the dedication and expertise at Christie’s is unequalled in the field. I’ve heard specialists talking to clients and extemporaneously discussing provenance and history with such passion. I see the same spark in our teams as I do in other experts across disciplines. It’s very inspiring.

There is no other event out there like Art+Tech. This annual conference is truly art meets science, bringing together artists, technologists and other industry leaders to lead a dialogue around the impact of tech in the art world. And it’s the best of each of these disciplines. I take no credit for starting the summit, which began in 2018. I took it over in collaboration with Samantha Koslow in 2021. Art+Tech gets more ambitious every year, and I don't say that lightly. We have had panellists like the legendary Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, Chairperson of the UAE Space Agency; Marc Glimcher, the CEO of Pace Gallery, and Metakovan, one of the collectors who bought the first Beeple. I feel blessed to see these people in action and bring their ideas to our audience.

I’ve also had the opportunity to step into the role of specialist, and I can’t imagine a better group to try a new career path with. As the resident technology expert at Christie’s, I’ve been collaborating with the sales teams on Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection, a collection of over 150 objects of scientific and historical importance. When I worked at Microsoft, I was fortunate to learn from the best technology leaders. Now, I feel like I’m interning with Christie’s specialists, who are the best at what they do.

I love the venture capital community and I’m not looking to change what I’m doing, but the Gen One sale is truly a marriage of my two families: Microsoft and Christie’s. Though Paul Allen wasn’t at Microsoft when I joined, he is in some way responsible for this immigrant from many hundreds of miles away moving to the Pacific Northwest and taking a job in the technology sector. That changed one aspect of my life, and Christie’s has changed my life in another way.

I will always remember the One Sale. The sale was a global live auction across multiple collecting categories. It took place in consecutive sessions in Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York, with people participating via Christie’s LIVE online bidding channel. It was such an interesting and innovative thing— the first of its kind — and over 80,000 people tuned in. It was a huge feat we pulled off during the pandemic — going totally online for an auction, that was a milestone in our world.

One of my first mentors at Microsoft once told me, Whatever you do, do it to the best of your capabilities. I also think you should follow your passion. Just as in life, you’ll be happier in your career if you follow your heart. If you do something you love, and you do it the best you can, then nobody can touch you.