A Silicon Valley executive who founded the popular mobile payment platform Cash App was fatally stabbed in the streets of San Francisco on Tuesday, and police are asking for tips as the killer remains at large.
The executive, 43-year-old Bob Lee, was stabbed around 2:35 a.m. in the city’s Rincon Hill neighborhood, the New York Times reported. A statement from police, which did not identify Lee but was confirmed to be about him, said he was found “suffering from apparent stab wounds” and died after being transported to a local hospital.
The San Francisco district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, tweeted Wednesday that “no arrests have been made” and called for tips, adding: “We do not tolerate these horrific acts of violence in San Francisco.”
Aside from founding Cash App, Lee had also been the chief technology officer of its parent company, Square (now called Block), and a software engineer for Google. At the time of his death, he had for a year and a half been the chief product officer for MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency platform.
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Lee’s LinkedIn page states that he was also an investor in Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, voice chat platform Clubhouse, design application Figma, and other businesses.
MobileCoin founder Joshua Goldbard said on Twitter that Lee was “an incredible human being” with a “kaleidoscopic mind.”
“There will never be anyone quite like him,” Goldbard wrote. “As a lifelong Bay Area resident I have more questions than answers tonight. I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong, but I know something isn’t working in our grey city.”
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Violent crime in San Francisco has been trending downward since at least 2006, but was higher than the national rate in 2020, according to U.S. News. San Francisco Police Department data currently shows there have been 12 homicides in the city so far this year, down from 10 at this time last year.
