Match Group announced that Hyperconnect Chief Executive Officer Sam Ahn has been appointed Chief Innovation Officer of Match Group Asia, a newly-created leadership role that will focus on driving innovation opportunities and leveraging emerging technologies. Ahn, co-founder of Hyperconnect, is a proven innovator and an early believer in the promise of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and innovative video, which have powered Hyperconnect's leading social discovery apps, Azar and Hakuna. In his role as Match Group Asia CIO, Ahn will oversee a new centralized Asia team that will include a talented group of existing employees, as well as hiring and expanding for new product and innovation roles to take advantage of opportunities in AI and other emerging technologies.

Sam Ahn will become the Chief Innovation Officer of Match Group Asia. Currently, he serves as CEO and Co-Founder of Hyperconnect, a technology company that operates two key social discovery apps with leading and innovative video, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality capabilities: Azar and Hakuna. The company pioneered one of the world's first mobile versions of WebRTC (a real-time video communication technology), which powers their products.

A serial entrepreneur, Sam has launched six other startups, and has spent his career focused on connecting people through technology. Prior to Hyperconnect, he was an engineer at Neowiz, and co-founded Rebi Search, a web search engine company. He holds a Bachelor of Material Science & Engineering from Seoul National University.