Daniel Gross

Daniel Gross is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and AI investor, born in Jerusalem in 1991, who joined Meta Superintelligence Labs in July 2025 after departing as co-founder and chief executive of Safe Superintelligence. Earlier in his career he founded the personal-search company Cue (originally Greplin), sold it to Apple in 2013, led machine-learning and search work at Apple from 2013 to 2017, and served as a partner at Y Combinator from 2017 to 2018, where he created the YC AI program. As of May 2026, his personal site states that he "runs compute for Meta," and he remains co-general-partner of NFDG, the venture fund he started with Nat Friedman that Meta moved to partially acquire in 2025.

At a glance

• Education: Horev yeshiva, Jerusalem; Bnei David pre-military academy in Eli; no completed university degree. Accepted into the Y Combinator Winter 2010 batch at age 17, reported at the time as the youngest founder admitted to the program.
• Current role: Compute lead at Meta Superintelligence Labs, since July 2025 (per his own site).
• Key contributions: Founder of Cue (originally Greplin), acquired by Apple in 2013; director of machine learning and search at Apple, 2013 to 2017; partner at Y Combinator, 2017 to 2018, where he started YC AI; founder of Pioneer in 2018; co-founder of AI Grant and the Andromeda Cluster supercomputer with Nat Friedman; co-founder and chief executive of Safe Superintelligence, June 2024 to June 2025.
• X / Twitter: @danielgross
• Personal site: danielgross.com
• Wikipedia: Daniel Gross (businessman)
• TIME 100 AI: 2023 honoree.

Origins

Gross was born in Jerusalem in 1991 and raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended the Horev religious yeshiva in Jerusalem and then enrolled in the Bnei David pre-military academy in the West Bank settlement of Eli, the standard route for religious-Zionist students preparing for IDF combat service. He left the program before enlistment to apply to Y Combinator with a search-engine prototype he had built on the side, and was accepted into the Winter 2010 batch at age 17. Press at the time, including Inc. and Forbes, reported him as the youngest founder admitted to YC.

The startup was Greplin, a personal-search engine that indexed a user's accounts across email, social media, and cloud storage so that a single query returned results across all of them. He co-founded the company with engineer Robby Walker. Greplin raised approximately $4 million from Sequoia Capital in 2011, a round that placed Gross among the youngest founders in the firm's portfolio.

Career

In 2012, Greplin was renamed Cue and pivoted to a predictive-assistant product that surfaced calendar, contact, and travel context proactively. In October 2013, Apple acquired Cue for an amount reported by The Times of Israel and TechCrunch as between $40 million and $60 million. Cue was shut down post-acquisition and Gross joined Apple as a director focused on machine learning and search, a role he held from 2013 through 2017. He has rarely discussed the substance of the Apple work publicly, in keeping with the company's secrecy norms.

In January 2017, Gross left Apple and joined Y Combinator as a partner. He created the YC AI track for the Summer 2017 batch, the accelerator's first dedicated AI program, providing participants with cloud compute credits, dataset access, and lectures from frontier AI researchers. He stayed at YC until August 2018, when he left to found Pioneer, a remote-first accelerator that ran a continuous tournament rather than the YC-style batch model. Pioneer awarded participants $5,000 to $20,000 of seed capital, with a possible $100,000 follow-on, and stopped making new investments in 2024 after backing roughly 150 companies. Pioneer's lead backers included Marc Andreessen and Stripe.

From the late 2010s through the early 2020s Gross built a personal angel-investing portfolio that included Uber, Instacart, Figma, GitHub, Airtable, Rippling, CoreWeave, Notion, SpaceX, Coinbase, Roblox, Perplexity AI, Character.ai, ElevenLabs, and Groq. In 2021 he and Nat Friedman, the former chief executive of GitHub, started AI Grant, an unconventional accelerator that gave AI-native startups $250,000 in cash and $250,000 in cloud credits. In 2023 the pair built the Andromeda Cluster, a privately-financed supercomputer originally consisting of 2,512 NVIDIA H100 GPUs that grew to roughly 4,000 GPUs by 2024 and was made available to AI Grant portfolio companies and outside teams at hourly rates. Also in 2023, Gross and Friedman launched NFDG, a $1.1 billion venture fund. The TIME 100 AI list named Gross among the most influential people in AI in 2023.

On June 19, 2024, Gross co-founded Safe Superintelligence with Ilya Sutskever and Daniel Levy, a few weeks after Sutskever's departure from OpenAI. Gross served as chief executive of SSI through its September 2024 $1 billion seed at a $5 billion valuation and the April 2025 $2 billion round at a $32 billion valuation. According to subsequent reporting in Bloomberg and CNBC, Meta attempted to acquire SSI outright in mid-2025; Sutskever declined the offer. Meta then proposed to partially buy out NFDG and hire Gross and Friedman directly. On July 3, 2025, Sutskever announced that Gross had departed SSI effective June 29 and that Sutskever had assumed the chief executive role.

Gross joined Meta Superintelligence Labs the same week. As of May 2026, Meta has not announced a formal title for the role. His personal site states that he "runs compute for Meta," consistent with the Andromeda-cluster background and the supply-side framing in Bloomberg's reporting that he would work on AI products and infrastructure.

Affiliations

• Cue (originally Greplin): Co-founder and chief executive, 2010 to 2013 (acquired by Apple).
• Apple: Director, machine learning and search, 2013 to 2017.
• Y Combinator: Partner, 2017-01 to 2018-08; founder of the YC AI track.
• Pioneer: Founder and chief executive, 2018-08 to present (no new investments since 2024).
• AI Grant: Co-founder with Nat Friedman, 2021 to present.
• Andromeda Cluster: Co-founder and operator, 2023 to 2024 (the cluster spun out as an independent compute company in 2024).
• NFDG: Co-general-partner with Nat Friedman, 2023 to present.
• Safe Superintelligence: Co-founder and chief executive, 2024-06-19 to 2025-06-29.
• Meta Superintelligence Labs: Compute lead (per his personal site), 2025-07 to present.

Notable contributions

Gross's contributions split into three phases: a single product company in the personal-assistant search space, a decade-plus run as a builder and backer of accelerator structures, and the SSI-then-Meta sequence in the frontier AI cycle.

• Cue (Greplin), 2010 to 2013. Personal-search and predictive-assistant product co-founded with Robby Walker, sold to Apple in October 2013 in a deal reported between $40 million and $60 million.
• YC AI, 2017. First dedicated AI track at Y Combinator, introduced for the Summer 2017 batch with cloud-compute credits, dataset access, and frontier-research talks.
• Pioneer, 2018 to 2024. Remote-first accelerator run as a continuous tournament. Funded approximately 150 startups across more than 50 countries before pausing new investments in 2024.
• AI Grant with Nat Friedman, 2021 to present. $250,000 in cash plus $250,000 in cloud credits to AI-native startups.
• Andromeda Cluster, 2023. Privately financed supercomputer, originally 2,512 H100 GPUs (later approximately 4,000). Spun out as an independent compute company in 2024 with $60 million in funding from Paradigm.
• NFDG, 2023. $1.1 billion venture fund co-led with Nat Friedman; reporting in 2025 indicated approximately 4x returns on deployed capital before Meta's partial buyout proposal.
• Safe Superintelligence, June 2024 to June 2025. Co-founder and chief executive of the pre-product safety-focused research lab; led both rounds that brought cumulative funding to approximately $3 billion at a $32 billion valuation.
• Honors. Forbes 30 Under 30 (Pioneers in Technology, 2011, and Influential Young People in Tech, 2014); TIME 100 AI (2023).

Investments and boards

Gross's investing footprint spans personal angel checks from the late 2010s, the AI Grant accelerator, the Andromeda Cluster compute platform, and the NFDG venture fund. The list below captures the disclosed AI, semiconductors, datacenters, and software activity rather than the broader personal portfolio.

• NFDG (AI / Software): Co-general-partner, 2023. Approximately $1.1 billion fund co-led with Nat Friedman, focused on AI infrastructure, applications, and developer tools. Meta negotiated a partial buyout of the fund's holdings in mid-2025 alongside the hire.
• AI Grant (AI): Co-founder, 2021. Accelerator providing $250,000 cash plus $250,000 in cloud credits to AI-native startups, co-run with Nat Friedman.
• Andromeda Cluster (Datacenters / AI): Co-founder, 2023. Privately financed GPU supercomputer built for AI Grant portfolio companies and outside training workloads. Spun out as an independent company in 2024 with $60 million from Paradigm.
• Pioneer (Software): Founder, 2018. Remote-first accelerator that ran a continuous tournament. Stopped new investments in 2024 after funding approximately 150 startups.
• Personal angel portfolio (AI / Software / Datacenters): Notable disclosed checks include Perplexity AI, Character.ai, Groq, and ElevenLabs in AI; CoreWeave in datacenters; and GitHub, Figma, Stripe, Coinbase, Uber, and Instacart in software. Most checks predate the NFDG fund.

Network

Gross's principal long-running professional relationship is with Nat Friedman, the former chief executive of GitHub, with whom he has co-founded AI Grant (2021), the Andromeda Cluster (2023), and the NFDG fund (2023), and with whom he co-joined Meta Superintelligence Labs in July 2025. The pair appear together regularly on Stratechery interviews with Ben Thompson on AI strategy, models, and product.

In the Y Combinator network, Gross's tenure as partner (2017 to 2018) connected him to founder cohorts spanning Sam Altman, the YC president he reported to and who is now chief executive of OpenAI, and to dozens of AI-startup founders he funded through the YC AI track. He was an early angel investor in Greg Brockman and other senior OpenAI figures before the company's frontier-AI rise.

At Safe Superintelligence, the founding cohort with Ilya Sutskever and Daniel Levy was the central operating relationship from June 2024 through Gross's departure on June 29, 2025. Sutskever assumed the chief executive role on July 3, 2025; Levy became president. At Meta Superintelligence Labs Gross now operates under chief AI officer Alexandr Wang and alongside Nat Friedman, with the broader leadership cohort including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on the parent-company side.

Position in the field

As of May 2026, Gross occupies an unusual position among senior AI operators because he has held nearly every type of role in the modern AI cycle: founder of an acquired startup, AI lead at an Incumbent technology company (Apple), partner at the canonical accelerator (Y Combinator), founder of an alternative accelerator (Pioneer), prolific personal angel, co-founder of a frontier AI lab (SSI), and senior operator inside an Incumbent (Meta). The transition from founding chief executive of one of the most highly-valued private AI companies to a non-titled compute role at a public Incumbent in the span of a single year is unusual at the senior level.

The compute angle is consistent across the post-Apple period. The Andromeda Cluster prefigured the 2024 to 2025 GPU-supply concern that came to define frontier-AI economics, and his current Meta brief follows the Bloomberg framing of compute and infrastructure as the binding constraint on Meta Superintelligence Labs' frontier ambitions.

His public profile is concentrated on the @danielgross account on X, the danielgross.com personal site, and a steady cadence of joint Stratechery interviews with Nat Friedman across 2022 to 2025. He is rarely the subject of solo long-form profiles in the mainstream business press, in keeping with a generally-low-key public posture relative to peers like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk.

Outlook

Open questions over the next 6 to 18 months:

• Meta compute role. Whether Gross's compute brief at Meta Superintelligence Labs is publicly clarified with a formal title and remit, and whether his work substantively shapes the post-2025 Meta capex cycle.
• NFDG status. Whether the Meta partial buyout of NFDG closes at the originally reported terms, and whether NFDG continues making new investments under his and Friedman's leadership while they are at Meta.
• Andromeda spin-out. Whether Andromeda continues to grow as an independent compute provider with the $60 million Paradigm round.
• SSI relationship. Whether Gross's stake in Safe Superintelligence and any continuing advisory or board relationship is disclosed publicly, given the ongoing Meta-SSI competitive overlap.
• Public profile cadence. Whether the regular Stratechery appearance pattern with Nat Friedman continues from inside Meta or pauses for the duration of the Meta tenure.

Sources

• Daniel Gross (businessman). Wikipedia biographical entry covering Jerusalem origins, the Greplin and Cue history, the Apple acquisition, the Y Combinator and Pioneer years, NFDG, AI Grant, the Andromeda Cluster, and the SSI and Meta moves.
• Daniel Gross personal site. Self-described current role ("runs compute for Meta"), portfolio listing, and contact details.
• Apple acquires Cue, the predictive search and personal assistant app. TechCrunch coverage of the October 2013 Apple acquisition with the reported $40 to $60 million range.
• Apple pays $40m. for Israeli 21-year-old's app. The Times of Israel coverage of the Cue acquisition with the lower-end price.
• Office Hours with Daniel Gross. Y Combinator blog post on Gross's partner role and the founding of the YC AI program.
• Pioneer.app. Pioneer's website with the tournament structure and portfolio company history.
• Daniel Gross: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2023. TIME 100 AI 2023 entry covering NFDG, AI Grant, the Andromeda Cluster, and the broader investor profile.
• Meta Adds Startup Founder Gross to New AI Superintelligence Lab. Bloomberg coverage of the July 3, 2025 announcement of Gross's move to Meta Superintelligence Labs.
• Meta tried to buy Safe Superintelligence, hired CEO Daniel Gross. CNBC coverage of the failed SSI acquisition attempt and Meta's hire.
• Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross joins Meta's new AI lab. SiliconANGLE coverage confirming the chief-executive title at SSI and the Sutskever succession.
• Meta in talks to partially acquire VC fund NFDG. Data Center Dynamics coverage of the NFDG partial-buyout structure that accompanied the Meta hires.
• Safe Superintelligence Inc. updates. The July 3, 2025 SSI update from Sutskever announcing Gross's departure effective June 29.
• Daniel Gross | The Knowledge Project #56. The April 2019 long-form Shane Parrish interview covering the Cue acquisition, the Apple period, and the Pioneer founding.
• An Interview with Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman about Models, Margins, and Moats. January 2025 Stratechery interview, representative of the Friedman-Gross interview cadence on AI strategy.
• @danielgross on X. Personal X account.
• Photo: Daniel Gross at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, CC BY 2.0 Steve Jennings / TechCrunch via Wikimedia Commons.