PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Daniel Gross

Daniel Gross is an entrepreneur and AI operator whose work spans search software, machine-learning teams, founder programs, and compute infrastructure. He co-founded Cue, served as an Apple director, and launched Y Combinator’s first AI startup track before co-founding Pioneer. Alongside Nat Friedman, he built Andromeda for portfolio startups; TIME named him to its 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI. He co-founded Safe Superintelligence in 2024, joined Meta’s superintelligence lab in 2025, and became a co-lead of Meta Compute in January 2026.

Now at
Meta
Photo of Daniel Gross

Timeline

  1. 2010–2013

    A search engine from Israel

    He came to the Bay Area from Israel, joined Y Combinator in 2010 as the program’s youngest founder at the time, and co-founded Cue, a search engine that Apple acquired in 2013.

  2. 2013–2017

    Machine learning at Apple

    At Apple, he became a director focused on machine learning and search; his team worked on features that pulled contact details from email into iOS apps.

  3. 2017

    An AI track at Y Combinator

    As a Y Combinator partner, he announced the accelerator’s first track for AI startups.

  4. 2018

    Backing founders worldwide

    He co-founded Pioneer, a startup accelerator that funded more than 150 companies and supported over 300 founders in more than 50 countries.

  5. 2023

    Building Andromeda

    With Nat Friedman, he built Andromeda, a multi-thousand-GPU cluster for AI startups in their portfolio. TIME named him to its first list of the 100 most influential people in AI.

  6. 2024

    Starting a safety lab

    With Ilya Sutskever and Daniel Levy, he co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. to pursue safe superintelligence.

  7. 2025–2026

    Leading Meta Compute

    In 2025, he left SSI for Meta’s new superintelligence lab. In January 2026, Meta named him co-lead of Meta Compute with Santosh Janardhan and assigned him long-term capacity planning and data-center strategy.

Sources and credits

Photo: TechCrunch, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY 2.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. Daniel Gross danielgross.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Product Hunt Radio: Finding the world’s lost Einsteins and putting an end to aging techcrunch.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Daniel Gross: Co-lead of Meta Compute | Frontier Minds frontierminds.ai. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. Y Combinator has a new AI track, and wants startups building ‘robot factory’ tech to apply techcrunch.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Pioneer pioneer.app. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. A view from billions of GPU-Hours andromeda.ai. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist, launches new AI company techcrunch.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. Meta Adds Startup Founder Gross to New AI Superintelligence Lab news.bloomberglaw.com. Checked 14 October 2026.