Daniel Gross, also known as Gross, is the founder at Pioneer and a technology angel investor. Gross has invested in companies like GitHub, Figma, Uber, Gusto, Notion, Opendoor, Cruise Automation and Coinbase. At age 18, he was accepted into the Y Combinator incubator, leading him from an Israeli military camp to Silicon Valley. There he created a social search startup called Cue, which was acquired by Apple for its predictive search capabilities in 2013.
American businessman Daniel Gross led Apple’s artificial intelligence initiatives, co-founded Cue, worked as a partner at Y-Combinator, and is a well-known technology investor in firms including Figma, GitHub, Airtable, Rippling, Character.ai, and Instacart, among others.
In 1991, Gross was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Gross received acceptance to the Y Combinator program in 2010. He was the youngest founder to be approved at the time. Gross introduced Greplin, thereafter known as Cue. As one of the “30 Under 30” in the “Pioneers in Technology” category, Forbes selected Gross in 2011. Gross was recognized by Business Insider as one of the “25 under 25” in Silicon Valley in 2012 and as one of the “30 under 30 Influential Young People in Tech” in 2014.
2023
Gross constructed Andromeda, a mountain of state-of-the-art chips weighing 7,255 kg. and costing around $100 million (including energy and cooling), in 2023 with fellow investor Nat Friedman. The chips are interconnected to create a massive “compute cluster,” to which Friedman and Grossman swap access for shares in AI businesses they deem promising. Other venture capitalists are thinking about copying this strategy.
He was 99 with the eating habits of a teenager — we had steak, wine, and candy for dinner. Charlie really embodied that poem:
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. https://t.co/VKNwg1PfUw
We’re also excited to announce our fundraising milestones: we have raised $55 million, initiated with pre-seed and seed rounds led by @natfriedman & @danielgross , and our Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (@mignano, @lisabethhan ). Investors include @eladgil ,…
