Idealab’s Bill Gross is building infrastructure for AI-assisted startups

For decades, the entrepreneur and investor Bill Gross has been celebrated for shaping the way tech businesses get off the ground. Idealab , which he founded in 1996, is considered the industry’s longest-running tech incubator; the directory of companies it’s backed—including CitySearch, Coinbase, Picasa, and Twilio—doubles as a museum of ever-shifting trends in logo design. Over the years, he’s also founded businesses in fields ranging from internet advertising to clean energy.