Gil Elbaz

Gil is an accomplished entrepreneur and pioneer of natural language technology and structured data ecosystems. Gil is passionate about building scalable information systems that drive innovative application development to enable better decision-making. In 1991, Gil earned his bachelor’s degree from Caltech, with a double major in Engineering/Applied Science and Economics. After college, Gil worked in engineering roles at IBM, Sybase, and SGI. In 1998, he co-founded Applied Semantics (ASI). ASI helped define and build new addressable markets with its AdSense and other contextual advertising products. The company was acquired by Google in 2003, at which point Gil became Director of Engineering for the Santa Monica office. His work there helped establish Google’s place as a leader in the field of online advertising. In 2007, Gil left Google to start Los Angeles-based Factual Inc., an open data platform founded to maximize data accuracy, transparency, and availability. Active in a number of nonprofit areas, Gil is on the board of trustees for the X Prize Foundation and Caltech, and a member of the Los Angeles Social Ventures Partners. He and his wife, Elyssa, also manage the Elbaz Family Foundation, supporting environmental and educational causes.