Executive Spotlight: Harrison Chase, Co-Founder and CEO of LangChain (2027)
Harrison Chase is the Co-Founder and CEO of LangChain, the company behind the open-source LangChain framework and the LangGraph and LangSmith tools for building and monitoring AI agents. He started LangChain as a side project in late 2022 and co-founded the company with Ankush Gola in early 2023.
He matters because LangChain became one of the most widely used frameworks for applications built on language models. In October 2025 the company announced a $125 million Series B at a $1.25 billion valuation.
This page uses public professional information only.
Current role and company
Chase is listed as CEO and Co-Founder of LangChain on the 2026 AI Engineer conference speaker page, and Fortune described him as cofounder and CEO when it reported the company's Series B in October 2025. In May 2026 he wrote the company's post introducing LangChain Labs, a research effort on agents that learn from their own runs.
- TitleCo-Founder and CEO, LangChain.
- Co-founderAnkush Gola.
- CompanyAn open agent engineering platform and open-source frameworks; based in San Francisco per his speaker biography.
- ProductsLangChain (framework), LangGraph (agent runtime), LangSmith (tracing and evaluation), Deep Agents (open-source agent harness).
Career path
- Kensho Technologies, 2017 to 2019. Machine-learning engineer, per his AI Engineer speaker biography.
- Robust Intelligence, 2019 to 2023. Machine-learning engineer. Fortune says he was an engineer there when he started LangChain.
- LangChain, October 2022. Released the first version as a Python side project, weeks after OpenAI released ChatGPT.
- LangChain company, February 2023. Co-founded the company with Ankush Gola and became its CEO.
- Funding. A $10 million seed round led by Benchmark in April 2023, a $25 million Series A led by Sequoia in 2024, and the $125 million Series B in October 2025.
What he is known for
- Creating LangChain. The open-source framework for connecting language models to data and tools grew out of his side project and became the base of the company.
- Agent tooling. LangGraph runs stateful, controllable agent workflows, and LangSmith traces and evaluates the inputs and outputs of model applications.
- Turning a side project into a company. Fortune recounts that he recalled having no clue what he was going to do next after the project's early success.
- Continual-learning research. His May 14, 2026 post introduced LangChain Labs, with Harvey, NVIDIA, Prime Intellect, Fireworks and Baseten as initial research partners.
Leadership style and philosophy
His speaker biography summarizes the themes he returns to: combining code-defined workflows with model-driven agents, building evaluation datasets before trusting a prototype, keeping humans in the loop for consequential actions, and owning agent memory rather than locking it behind proprietary platforms.
In the LangChain Labs post he wrote: "Every agent run contains useful signal." The post frames agent traces, feedback and evaluation results as data that can help agents improve.
Key numbers
All figures are company-reported unless noted. LangChain has not published full financials.
- Series B$125 million at a $1.25 billion valuation, led by IVP (announced October 20, 2025).
- Earlier rounds$10 million seed (April 2023) and $25 million Series A at a $200 million valuation (2024), per Fortune.
- Downloadslangchain and langgraph together at 90 million monthly downloads (October 2025).
- Enterprise reach35 percent of the Fortune 500 use LangChain services (October 2025).
- LangSmith trace volumeUp 12x year over year (October 2025).
- Open-source downloadsMore than 1 billion in total (LangChain about page, undated).
What to watch next
Worth tracking: results from LangChain Labs, how LangSmith adoption grows after the Series B, and whether the company discloses revenue.
Questions people ask
Who is Harrison Chase?
He is the Co-Founder and CEO of LangChain, which he began as an open-source side project in late 2022 and turned into a company with Ankush Gola in early 2023.
What does LangChain do?
LangChain describes itself as an open agent engineering platform with open-source frameworks. Its tools include LangChain, LangGraph and LangSmith.
How much has LangChain raised?
Fortune reports a $10 million seed, a $25 million Series A and a $125 million Series B announced October 20, 2025 at a $1.25 billion valuation.
Where did Harrison Chase work before LangChain?
His speaker biography lists machine-learning engineering roles at Kensho Technologies (2017 to 2019) and Robust Intelligence (2019 to 2023).
Who founded LangChain with him?
Ankush Gola co-founded the company with him in early 2023.
Sources
- AI Engineer: Harrison Chase speaker page (2026) · Current title, career history, themes
- Fortune: LangChain is now a unicorn with a fresh $125 million (October 20, 2025) · Funding history, founding story, customers
- LangChain: Series B announcement (October 20, 2025) · Round details, downloads, Fortune 500 reach, trace growth
- LangChain: About · Company description, founding, usage figures
- LangChain: Introducing LangChain Labs (May 14, 2026) · Chase's post, research partners, headshot
Facts were read from the linked pages on October 31, 2026. Some pages were read through a fetch tool that returns summaries, so confirm details on the original page. The hero photo is LangChain's own headshot of Chase, centered on a card. This page covers public professional information only.
Top photo: LangChain (langchain.com)