Daniel Gross has had a big effect on the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which is changing very quickly. Gross is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, investor, and innovator who has built an amazing career by starting and running transformative startups, putting money into cutting-edge AI projects, and shaping the future of AI development. Gross’s journey, from being a teenage founder to being a key player in the AI superintelligence race today, shows how smart, ambitious, and determined he is to come up with new ideas. This article talks about his life, accomplishments, and contributions to the AI ecosystem, showing why he is seen as one of the most important people in the field.
Early Life and Entrepreneurial Beginnings
Daniel Gross was born in 1991 in Jerusalem, Israel, which is in a part of the world known for its lively tech scene. His early experiences with technology and solving problems set him up for a great career. Gross moved to the United States with little more than the money he saved for his bar mitzvah when he was only 19. This changed his life. This brave move to Silicon Valley was the start of his rise as an entrepreneur. Before joining the Israel Defense Forces in 2010, Gross went to San Francisco and was accepted into Y Combinator, a well-known startup accelerator. At the time, he was the youngest person to ever start a company there.
In 2010, Gross co-founded Greplin, a search engine, with Robby Walker. This was his first big business. Greplin wanted to change the way people got information by letting them search through multiple online accounts, like email, social media, and cloud storage, all from one place. The idea was ahead of its time, as it dealt with the growing difficulty of keeping track of digital footprints. In 2012, Greplin changed its name to Cue and got $10 million from Index Ventures to make its predictive search even better. Apple noticed the startup’s new way of doing things and bought Cue in 2013 for a reported $40–60 million.
The acquisition was a turning point in Gross’s career. As a director at Apple, he worked on machine learning, which helped bring AI to iOS and macOS. This included making Siri smarter and improving how data is processed. During his time at Apple from 2013 to 2017, he learned a lot more about AI and search technologies, which helped him prepare for what he would do next.
A New Beginning at Y Combinator
Gross became a partner at Y Combinator in 2017 and led the creation of the “YC AI” program, which is a special program to help AI-driven startups. This action made him even more well-known as a thought leader in AI entrepreneurship. Gross worked with and invested in early-stage companies at Y Combinator, using his experience to find and develop promising talent. At YC, he helped shape the next generation of AI startups by encouraging new ideas in fields like machine learning, autonomous systems, and data infrastructure.
Gross started Pioneer in 2018. It’s a remote startup accelerator and fund that helps talented entrepreneurs from all over the world. Pioneer’s goal was to make it easier for anyone, no matter where they lived, to get startup resources. They focused on ambitious people. Pioneer gave founders money, advice, and a global network so they could solve hard problems, many of which had to do with AI. This project showed that Gross was dedicated to promoting innovation around the world and believed that technology could change lives.
A Prolific Investor in AI and Beyond
Along with his business ventures, Gross became a well-known angel investor, backing more than 150 startups, including well-known names like Uber, Instacart, Figma, GitHub, Airtable, Rippling, Coinbase, and CoreWeave. His investment philosophy is based on finding founders with unique ideas and markets that haven’t been fully explored yet. People think Gross is a smart investor, especially in the AI space, because he can spot winners early.
Gross teamed up with Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub, in 2021 to start AI Grant, which gives AI-native startups $250,000 in funding. This project was meant to speed up the growth of AI technologies by helping founders with big ideas. Gross and Friedman put money into the Andromeda Cluster, a $100 million supercomputer cluster that will have 4,000 H100 GPUs by 2024, to help AI startups get past their computational bottlenecks. Startups were able to train advanced AI models quickly because they could trade equity for computing power. The Andromeda Cluster showed how smart Gross was to deal with the hardware problems that often get in the way of AI progress.
Their venture capital firm, NFDG (which stands for their initials), has become a major player in AI investment, supporting companies like Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), Character.ai, and Perplexity AI. Gross thinks that AI has the power to change many industries, from legal tech to self-driving cars. This is clear in NFDG’s portfolio. Time magazine named Gross one of the “100 Most Influential People in AI” in 2023 because of his work on both investing in AI and building the infrastructure for it.
Starting Safe Superintelligence Inc.
In June 2024, Gross started Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) with Ilya Sutskever, who used to be the chief scientist at OpenAI, and Daniel Levy, who used to work at OpenAI as a researcher. SSI wanted to make AI systems that are safer and smarter than people and can do things that people can’t do. The startup’s goal was to improve both the capabilities and safety of AI at the same time, in response to worries about the existential risks posed by advanced AI. SSI quickly became known as a leader in the race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) with offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.
As CEO, Gross helped SSI get $1 billion in funding by September 2024, which made the company worth $5 billion. Top venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and NFDG itself were among the investors. The money was used to buy computing power and hire the best people, which shows SSI’s commitment to building a small, mission-driven team. Gross stressed how important it was to make sure that investors shared SSI’s safety-first mission. This would let the company focus on long-term R&D without having to worry about making money.
In June 2025, however, Gross left his job as SSI’s CEO, and Sutskever took over. This change happened after reports that Meta Platforms tried to buy SSI, which was worth $32 billion, and then hired Gross to work in its new AI superintelligence lab. Sutskever praised Gross’s early work at SSI, and the two parted ways on good terms. Gross said in a public statement that he was sure about SSI’s future and that the company’s work would lead to “miracles.”
Joining Meta’s Superintelligence Lab
In 2025, Meta opened the Meta Superintelligence Labs as a result of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive push into AI. Meta hired Gross and Nat Friedman to help with its AI work after failing to buy SSI. They were joined by Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI. Meta also bought a stake in NFDG, which shows that they are working together strategically to use Gross and Friedman’s knowledge and investment portfolio. Gross’s job at Meta is to make AI products for the superintelligence group, which makes sense because he has a lot of experience with AI and search technologies.
This change shows how hard it is to find good AI workers, as Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic all want to hire the best researchers and entrepreneurs. Gross’s move to Meta shows how valuable he is as a visionary leader who can connect new technology with business strategy. His job at Meta will likely be to improve AI technologies to the point where they are as good as or better than humans, which is in line with Zuckerberg’s vision of a “new era for humanity.”
Gross’s Philosophy and Impact
A mix of technical know-how, entrepreneurial courage, and the ability to spot game-changing chances has defined Gross’s career. His philosophy stresses the importance of having a deep understanding of markets and founders, as well as being willing to take calculated risks. In a podcast from 2023, Gross talked about how important brand is for startups and said that AI would speed up tasks like data extraction and organization, changing fields like legal tech and logistics.
He has put money into companies like Ivo, an AI-powered legal assistant, and CoreWeave, a GPU cloud provider. These investments show that he is interested in AI that can be used in the real world to solve problems. Gross is a thought leader in the field because he can see trends coming, like the GPU shortage in AI development.
Challenges and Controversies
There have been problems in the AI talent wars. Reports that Meta is offering researchers multimillion-dollar pay packages to get them to work for them show how competitive the field is that Gross is in. People wondered what would happen to the startup after he left SSI, but Sutskever’s leadership and SSI’s $1 billion war chest suggest that it is still on track. Also, the moral issues surrounding superintelligent AI, such as worries about misuse or existential risks, are still very important. Gross is aware of these issues, as shown by his dedication to safety at SSI and his ongoing work at Meta.
The Road Ahead
Daniel Gross is 34 years old and is at the cutting edge of AI innovation. He has started companies, led AI projects at Apple and Y Combinator, and invested in technologies that change the world. His move to Meta puts him in a position to help shape the next stage of AI development, which could have an effect on how superintelligent systems are used in daily life. At the same time, his investments through NFDG and the Andromeda Cluster keep giving AI startups the tools they need to succeed, which means his impact goes beyond what he does directly.
Gross’s story of becoming a global AI leader from a teenage founder in Jerusalem is one of strength, vision, and making a difference. As AI continues to change businesses and societies, Gross’s work will probably be very important in shaping its future. Daniel Gross is still a major player in the search for safe, transformative AI, whether through Meta’s superintelligence lab or his ongoing investments.
, which is changing very quickly. Gross is an Israeli-American entrepreneur,){kind=link}