Jory Bell

Jory Bell is a General Partner at Playground Global, having joined the firm as Vice President in 2015.

Jory grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and went on to attend MIT where he earned three undergraduate degrees in architecture, literature, and earth atmosphere & planetary studies. After graduation, Jory worked as a researcher as part of the joint MIT/ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute climate change program where he designed, built, and deployed autonomous deep-sea robotics.

Drawn to the Bay Area by his passion for entrepreneurial technology, Jory spent six years at Apple as a laptop designer. In 2000, Jory left Apple to found OQO, a computer hardware and software manufacturer credited by the Guinness World Records as having created the world’s smallest Windows PC.

Upon joining Playground, Jory discovered his passion for working with brilliant technical founders using science and technology to build massive companies to address large-scale societal needs. The first three investments Jory made at Playground are now unicorns with one, Velo3D, going public in October 2021.

Jory sourced some of the firm’s earliest investments including Nervana Systems (acquired by Intel) and subsequently led the firm’s investment efforts in deep tech areas including advanced manufacturing, aerospace, genomics, and synthetic/computational biology.

Outside of work, Jory and his wife can be found practicing acrobatics and tiger parenting their young daughter.

Current board seats:

• Amber Bio
• Atomic AI
• De-Ice
• Manifold Bio
• Relativity Space
• Strand Therapeutics
• Ultima