THE BUILDERS

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Founder backgrounds, companies and original conversations.

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87 founder profiles

OpenAI

Sam Altman

Co-founded OpenAI and previously led Y Combinator. His interviews connect AI research, product distribution, infrastructure spending and the organizational choices involved in scaling an AI company.

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OpenAI

Greg Brockman

Greg Brockman is a co-founder of OpenAI. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in foundation models.

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Anthropic

Dario Amodei

Dario Amodei is a co-founder of Anthropic. An AI researcher whose work helped shape the company’s emphasis on model capability, reliability and safety.

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Anthropic

Daniela Amodei

Daniela Amodei is a co-founder of Anthropic. Helped build the organization and operating approach around Anthropic’s research and commercial work.

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Cohere

Aidan Gomez

Aidan Gomez is a co-founder of Cohere. A co-author of the original Transformer research paper, with a focus on applying language models to enterprise work.

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Cohere

Nick Frosst

Nick Frosst is a co-founder of Cohere. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in enterprise ai.

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Cohere

Ivan Zhang

Ivan Zhang is a co-founder of Cohere. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in enterprise ai.

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Mistral AI

Arthur Mensch

Co-founded Mistral after working in AI research at DeepMind. His background connects frontier models with open and enterprise deployment.

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Mistral AI

Guillaume Lample

Co-founded Mistral with a research background in language models and machine learning.

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Mistral AI

Timothée Lacroix

Co-founded Mistral with an engineering and AI research background.

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World Labs

Fei-Fei Li

Co-founded World Labs to build spatial intelligence. Her work in computer vision connects visual understanding with world models and physical environments.

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World Labs

Justin Johnson

Co-founded World Labs and works in computer vision, generative AI and machine learning.

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World Labs

Ben Mildenhall

Co-founded World Labs with a research background spanning computer vision and graphics.

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World Labs

Christoph Lassner

Co-founded World Labs with a background in machine learning, computer vision and graphics.

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Shield AI

Brandon Tseng

Brandon Tseng is a co-founder of Shield AI. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in autonomous aircraft.

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Shield AI

Ryan Tseng

Ryan Tseng is a co-founder of Shield AI. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in autonomous aircraft.

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Hadrian

Chris Power

Founded Hadrian to expand industrial capacity through software-driven manufacturing and automated factories.

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Impulse Space

Tom Mueller

Founded Impulse Space after a career developing rocket propulsion. The company focuses on moving payloads after they reach space.

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Stripe

Patrick Collison

Co-founded Stripe with his brother John. The business began with developer-friendly online payments and expanded into financial infrastructure.

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Stripe

John Collison

Co-founded Stripe with Patrick Collison. The brothers’ annual letters explain the company’s approach to products, customers and the internet economy.

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Ramp

Eric Glyman

Eric Glyman is a co-founder of Ramp. Previously co-founded Paribus. Ramp combines financial products with tools designed to reduce administrative work.

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Ramp

Karim Atiyeh

Karim Atiyeh is a co-founder of Ramp. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in corporate finance.

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Ramp

Gene Lee

Gene Lee is a co-founder of Ramp. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in corporate finance.

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Plaid

Zach Perret

Zach Perret is a co-founder of Plaid. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in financial data infrastructure.

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Plaid

William Hockey

William Hockey is a co-founder of Plaid. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in financial data infrastructure.

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Revolut

Nik Storonsky

Co-founded Revolut to make financial services easier to access through software. The company’s expansion combines product breadth with country-by-country regulatory requirements.

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Revolut

Vlad Yatsenko

Co-founded Revolut with a software engineering background and helped develop the platform’s technical infrastructure.

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Mercury

Immad Akhund

Co-founded Mercury in 2017 with Jason Zhang and Max Tagher. A repeat founder, he frames the product around the financial work of running a business.

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Mercury

Jason Zhang

Co-founded Mercury with Immad Akhund and Max Tagher to build financial tools for founders and businesses.

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Mercury

Max Tagher

Co-founded Mercury with Immad Akhund and Jason Zhang, helping create its software-based financial platform.

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Databricks

Ali Ghodsi

Ali Ghodsi is a co-founder of Databricks. A distributed-systems researcher and member of Databricks’ founding team. The business grew from open-source data technology into an enterprise platform.

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Databricks

Matei Zaharia

Matei Zaharia is a co-founder of Databricks. Created Apache Spark, one of the technologies behind the company’s origins.

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Databricks

Reynold Xin

Reynold Xin is a co-founder of Databricks. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in data & ai platforms.

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Canva

Melanie Perkins

Co-founded Canva after starting the yearbook-design business Fusion Books. Her founding idea focused on making design tools accessible to more people.

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Canva

Cliff Obrecht

Co-founded Canva and Fusion Books with Melanie Perkins, bringing company-building experience to a global design platform.

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Canva

Cameron Adams

Co-founded Canva with a product and design background. He helped shape the platform’s browser-based design experience.

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Notion

Ivan Zhao

Co-founded Notion around a flexible workspace in which people can combine documents, information and software-like building blocks.

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Notion

Simon Last

Co-founded Notion and helped establish the product’s technical foundation.

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Oura

Petteri Lahtela

A co-founder of Oura, whose early development brought sleep and recovery measurement into a wearable ring.

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Helion

David Kirtley

David Kirtley is a co-founder of Helion. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in fusion energy.

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Helion

Chris Pihl

Chris Pihl is a co-founder of Helion. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in fusion energy.

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Bob Mumgaard

Bob Mumgaard is a co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in fusion energy.

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Dennis Whyte

Dennis Whyte is a co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in fusion energy.

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Brandon Sorbom

Brandon Sorbom is a co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in fusion energy.

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Redwood Materials

JB Straubel

Founded Redwood Materials after co-founding Tesla. Redwood connects battery recycling and materials recovery with a growing energy-storage business.

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Perplexity

Aravind Srinivas

Aravind Srinivas is a co-founder of Perplexity. An AI researcher who helped build Perplexity around search, retrieval and generated answers.

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Perplexity

Denis Yarats

Denis Yarats is a co-founder of Perplexity. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in ai search.

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Perplexity

Johnny Ho

Johnny Ho is a co-founder of Perplexity. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in ai search.

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Glean

Arvind Jain

Arvind Jain is a co-founder of Glean. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in enterprise search.

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Glean

Tony Gentilcore

Tony Gentilcore is a co-founder of Glean. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in enterprise search.

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Glean

Piyush Prahladka

Piyush Prahladka is a co-founder of Glean. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in enterprise search.

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Anduril

Palmer Luckey

Palmer Luckey is a co-founder of Anduril. Previously founded Oculus. His company-building background connects consumer hardware with autonomous defense systems.

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Anduril

Brian Schimpf

Brian Schimpf is a co-founder of Anduril. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in defense technology.

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Anduril

Trae Stephens

Trae Stephens is a co-founder of Anduril. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in defense technology.

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Saronic

Dino Mavrookas

Dino Mavrookas is a co-founder of Saronic. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in autonomous maritime.

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Saronic

Rob Lehman

Rob Lehman is a co-founder of Saronic. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in autonomous maritime.

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Epirus

Bo Marr

Bo Marr is a co-founder of Epirus. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in counter-drone systems.

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Figure

Brett Adcock

Brett Adcock is a co-founder of Figure. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in humanoid robotics.

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Apptronik

Jeff Cardenas

Jeff Cardenas is a co-founder of Apptronik. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in humanoid robotics.

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Apptronik

Nick Paine

Nick Paine is a co-founder of Apptronik. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in humanoid robotics.

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Apptronik

Luis Sentis

Luis Sentis is a co-founder of Apptronik. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in humanoid robotics.

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Skild AI

Deepak Pathak

Deepak Pathak is a co-founder of Skild AI. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in robotics foundation models.

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Skild AI

Abhinav Gupta

Abhinav Gupta is a co-founder of Skild AI. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in robotics foundation models.

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Physical Intelligence

Karol Hausman

Karol Hausman is a co-founder of Physical Intelligence. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in robotics foundation models.

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Physical Intelligence

Chelsea Finn

Chelsea Finn is a co-founder of Physical Intelligence. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in robotics foundation models.

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Physical Intelligence

Sergey Levine

Sergey Levine is a co-founder of Physical Intelligence. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in robotics foundation models.

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Brex

Pedro Franceschi

Pedro Franceschi is a co-founder of Brex. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in corporate finance.

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Brex

Henrique Dubugras

Henrique Dubugras is a co-founder of Brex. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in corporate finance.

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Rippling

Parker Conrad

Parker Conrad is a co-founder of Rippling. Previously co-founded Zenefits. Rippling applies a shared employee record across HR, IT and finance.

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Rippling

Prasanna Sankar

Prasanna Sankar is a co-founder of Rippling. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in workforce platforms.

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TAE Technologies

Norman Rostoker

Norman Rostoker is a historical founder of TAE Technologies. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in fusion energy.

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Neuralink

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a co-founder of Neuralink. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in brain-computer interfaces.

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Neuralink

DJ Seo

DJ Seo is a co-founder of Neuralink. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in brain-computer interfaces.

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Altos Labs

Rick Klausner

Rick Klausner is a co-founder of Altos Labs. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in cellular rejuvenation.

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Epic Games

Tim Sweeney

Tim Sweeney is a co-founder of Epic Games. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in gaming platforms.

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Epic Games

Mark Rein

Mark Rein is a co-founder of Epic Games. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in gaming platforms.

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Discord

Jason Citron

Jason Citron is a co-founder of Discord. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in communication platforms.

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Discord

Stan Vishnevskiy

Stan Vishnevskiy is a co-founder of Discord. The company’s founding and leadership material provides context for its work in communication platforms.

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Lambda

Stephen Balaban

Co-founded Lambda to build computing systems for AI developers and researchers.

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Lambda

Michael Balaban

Co-founded Lambda, contributing to the company’s origins in computing infrastructure for machine learning.

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Crusoe

Chase Lochmiller

Co-founded Crusoe around the connection between energy resources and compute-intensive workloads.

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Crusoe

Cully Cavness

Co-founded Crusoe, combining an energy background with the development of computing infrastructure.

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Kraken

Jesse Powell

Co-founded Kraken, helping establish an early digital-asset exchange. Founding history should be distinguished from the company’s current management.

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Kraken

Thanh Luu

Co-founded Kraken and contributed to its early technical development.

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CoreWeave

Michael Intrator

Co-founded CoreWeave, which developed from GPU computing into specialized AI cloud infrastructure.

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CoreWeave

Brian Venturo

Co-founded CoreWeave and contributed to its infrastructure and technology development.

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CoreWeave

Brannin McBee

Co-founded CoreWeave and contributed to its commercial development.

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