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Gil is an accomplished entrepreneur and pioneer of natural language technology and structured data ecosystems. Gil is the co-founder of Applied Semantics (ASI). ASI built AdSense and other contextual advertising products. The company was acquired by Google in 2003, at which point Gil became Director of Engineering for Google’s Santa Monica office. Gil left Google to start Factual Inc., an open data platform founded to maximize data accuracy, transparency, and availability. Gil also founded the Common Crawl Foundation, the largest open repository of web data, which has laid the foundation for many advances in AI including projects like GPT, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E. Gil is active in a number of nonprofits including the X Prize, Caltech, and the LA Social Ventures Partners. He and his wife, Elyssa, also manage the Elbaz Family Foundation, supporting environmental and educational causes.
Grew up in San Antonio, Caltech BS
FinTech, Data analytics, AdTech, ClimateTech
Applied Semantics (acquired by Google), Factual (merged with Foursquare), Common Crawl (non-profit)
As a kid I loved numbers as much as anyone could love anything. I created a huge database of numbers and their significance
College at Caltech. Returned to LA in '97 because LA was home and I wanted to be part of the entrepreneurial community here
Natural language understanding models using the latest in AI/deep learning
At Applied Semantics, along with my brother, we invented AdSense and the concept of contextual ads
When the numbers presented are off
Don't second guess your decisions and remind yourself that they were right for you at the time
Play basketball, read and talk about tech and data (which doesn’t feel like work to me)
Our VC’s fund imploded and our lead equity holder didn't invest in our company (and clearly didn't like us)
There's no better thing to spend time on than helping early-stage entrepreneurs shape their ideas and get to the next level!
Go Clippers!
