# David Gu

> David Gu is the co-founder and CEO of Recall.ai, a San Francisco developer-infrastructure company that provides a unified API and SDKs for capturing recordings, transcripts, audio, video, and metadata from virtual and in-person conversations. After leaving the University of Waterloo for Y Combinator at 19, Gu and co-founder Amanda Zhu spent years building a call-recording product, then turned its hardest and least visible component into Recall.ai. The company raised a $38 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners in September 2025 and, by March 2026, was reported to serve more than 3,000 companies.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Recall.ai
- **Organizations:** Recall.ai, Perfect Recall, Y Combinator, University of Waterloo
- **Education:** Software Engineering, left during the second year to build his company, University of Waterloo, Winter 2020 batch, Y Combinator
- **Known for:** Co-founded Recall.ai and led its evolution from an application into conversation-data infrastructure., Raised a $38 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners in September 2025., Built infrastructure reported by Bessemer in March 2026 to serve more than 3,000 companies.

## Career timeline

- **2017** — Won a grand prize at the MIT Reality Virtually Hackathon for a virtual-reality exercise platform for seniors.
- **2018** — Entered the University of Waterloo as a Schulich Leader Scholarship recipient to study software engineering.
- **2020** — Left Waterloo during his second year at age 19, joined Y Combinator W20, and began building Perfect Recall with Amanda Zhu.
- **2020-2022** — Built a call-recording product for user researchers and product managers, while operating its meeting-capture infrastructure.
- **2022** — Pivoted the underlying company and launched Recall.ai as a unified API for meeting recording and conversation data.
- **2022** — Raised a $2.7 million seed round for Recall.ai.
- **2024** — Raised a $10 million Series A led by Ridge Ventures; Recall.ai reported supporting more than 300 companies.
- **2025** — Launched the Desktop Recording SDK, expanding capture beyond visible meeting bots.
- **2025** — Raised a $38 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a reported $250 million valuation.
- **2026** — Bessemer reported Recall.ai serving more than 3,000 companies across meeting bots, desktop capture, and emerging mobile capture.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Recall.ai and led its evolution from an application into conversation-data infrastructure.
- Raised a $38 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners in September 2025.
- Built infrastructure reported by Bessemer in March 2026 to serve more than 3,000 companies.
- Wrote the first version of the original call-recording software and operated its infrastructure for three years.
- With Amanda Zhu, closed Recall.ai's first $2 million in revenue without a dedicated salesperson.
- Won a grand prize at the 2017 MIT Reality Virtually Hackathon.
- Received a Schulich Leader Scholarship upon entering the University of Waterloo.

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Published ‘Correctness, Completeness, Simplicity,’ an essay arguing that system design should optimize for user success rather than any one isolated quality.
- **2026-03** — A Bessemer case study reported that Recall.ai had expanded to more than 3,000 companies and a broader suite including its Desktop Recording SDK.
- **2025-09** — Recall.ai closed a $38 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a reported $250 million valuation.
- **2025-09** — Appeared on the Founders in Arms podcast to discuss the pivot, founder-led sales, years of frugal operation, and Recall.ai's conversation-data thesis.
- **2025-09** — Appeared in a Y Combinator interview describing Recall.ai's scale, origin, and early fundraising journey.

## Links

- Website: https://davidgu.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gu
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/davidgu

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/david-gu
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-18