Bob Lee, the chief product officer of crypto startup MobileCoin Inc., has died at the age of 43.
Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the San Francisco Chronicle said, citing unnamed sources and police. The San Francisco Police Department said on its website that officers found a 43-year-old man with stab wounds after responding to a call at 2:35 a.m., and the person later died at the hospital.
A spokesperson for the SFPD declined to release further information when contacted by Bloomberg because the homicide is an active investigation and referred questions about the victim's identity to the medical examiner. A representative for the Chief Medical Examiner's office didn't have an immediate comment.
Lee, a veteran Silicon Valley executive, is survived by "a loving family and collection of close friends and collaborators," MobileCoin Chief Executive Officer Joshua Goldbard said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Bob was made for the new world, he was the quintessential creator, leader, and consummate hacker," Goldbard said. "Bob surely had an impact that will last far beyond his short time on earth."
Lee was the first chief technology officer of Square, the financial technology startup co-founded by Jack Dorsey, and now called Block Inc. While at the company, he created CashApp, a money transfer app that also lets users buy stocks and Bitcoin. Earlier in his career, he helped develop Android while he was a software engineer for Google.
There was an outpouring of grief in tech circles on Twitter Tuesday night. Figma CEO Dylan Field recalled Lee's early support of his company and wrote, "It's so hard to believe he's gone."
