William T. Gross (born 1958) is an American businessman.

Early life

Gross grew up in

Encino, California Encino is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. History Etymology The name Encino is the misspelling in masculine of Encina, the Spanish language, Spanish word for "holm oak” (Quercus ilex). The Spanis ...

and graduated with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

Career

He founded GNP Loudspeakers (now GNP Audio Video), an audio equipment manufacturer; Starship Video, a video arcade, GNP Development Inc., acquired by

Lotus Development Corporation Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...

; Knowledge Adventure, an educational software company, later acquired by Cendant; and the business incubator Idealab in March, 1996, of which he serves as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Gross serves on the boards of numerous companies. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the

and of the

Art Center College of Design The ArtCenter College of Design is a private art college in Pasadena, California. It was incorporated in 1930 as a degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the visual arts and design. ...

. One company founded by Gross, GoTo.com, Inc., provided an Internet search engine which relied upon sponsored search results and pay-per-click advertisements. GoTo.com was later renamed Overture Services Inc. and was then acquired by

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

to provide their Yahoo! Search Marketing products. In 1996, Gross purchased the domain name Answers.com, which was later sold to NetShepard and then to GuruNet. In 2004, Gross created the SNAP search engine which introduced a new hyperlink previewer, Snap Shots. In 2010, Gross founded and launched TweetUp, a search engine for

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

that promotes the best tweeters on any topic. TweetUp was renamed to "PostUp" to reflect its inclusion of

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

status updates. On January 24, 2011, PostUp acquired popular Twitter client app UberTwitter—after previously purchasing Echofon (for iPhone/iOS) and Twidroyd (for Android OS)—and renamed itself UberMedia.

Solar energy

A Gross company, Energy Innovations, is working on development of a rooftop concentrated

photovoltaic Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially ...

solar collector for flat-roofed commercial buildings. They completed the world's largest corporate solar installation at Google's headquarters in 2006. During 2010, Gross was the CEO of

eSolar eSolar is a privately held company that develops concentrating solar power (CSP) plant technology. The company was founded by the Pasadena-based business incubator Idealab in 2007 as a developer of CSP plant technology. The company aims to dev ...

, a company that aims to make renewable energy cost-competitive with fossil fuel energy using CSP technology. eSolar builds an individual 46 MW power unit on 200 acres and can scale up to 500 MW or larger capacity with multiple units. Gross also founded Heliogen, a clean energy company backed by

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

. The company has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius. Heliogen went public in 2021 through a merger with Athena SPACs. Bill Gross resigned as CEO in 2023 and in April 2023 made a tender offer to buy the company.

References

External links

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"A solar energy system that tracks the sun" (TED2003)
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"The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed" (TED2015)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gross, Bill 1958 births Living people American computer businesspeople American technology chief executives American technology company founders American information technology businesspeople California Institute of Technology trustees California Institute of Technology alumni Businesspeople from Los Angeles