Chase Bonhag was raised in Traverse City and is currently the CEO of FirstIgnite, an AI powered business intelligence tool used by over 75 universities on 5 continents. Prior to FirstIgnite, Chase worked for the University of Illinois system, helping invest in and commercialize the most promising technologies out of their $700M/year research portfolio. Later he joined TechNexus, a venture capital fund focused on making seed stage investments on behalf of corporations where he focused on investing in deep tech aligned with our corporate partners strategy.

FirstIgnite builds AI powered software for universities.