# Eleazar Vega-Gonzalez

> Eleazar Vega-Gonzalez is a San Francisco founder and engineer whose public career runs from a Carnegie Mellon wearable-computing project and Microsoft patents to low-power AI chips, pay-by-bank software, and Coil's current interactive AI storytelling platform. Across those shifts, the consistent thread is his stated taste for AI and polished user experiences, plus a habit of taking complicated infrastructure and trying to make it feel simpler at the surface.

- **Role:** Founder at Coil
- **Organizations:** Coil, Reduced Energy Microsystems, Microsoft, Y Combinator, Carnegie Mellon University, Phillips Academy Andover, Prep for Prep
- **Education:** Carnegie Mellon University, High school diploma, Phillips Academy Andover, Summer 2015 and Winter 2023 batches, Y Combinator
- **Known for:** Co-founded Reduced Energy Microsystems, identified by Y Combinator as its first chip startup., Took part in two Y Combinator batches: Summer 2015 with REM and Winter 2023 with Coil., Helped REM raise a reported $2 million seed round backed by Draper Associates.

## Career timeline

- **2008** — Graduated from Phillips Academy Andover after attending through Prep for Prep; also appeared as Big E in a student-made satire.
- **2012** — Graduated from Carnegie Mellon University and helped build lifeLogger, a wearable geo-tagged journal; implemented its REST API and web visualization.
- **2012** — Received an associate producer credit on the short film First Kiss.
- **2013-2015** — Worked on software at Microsoft; patent filings from this period name him as an inventor on content-capture and application-container technologies.
- **2014** — Built the What the Hash? Chrome extension over a Sunday after encountering an unfamiliar hashtag.
- **2015** — Co-founded Reduced Energy Microsystems and joined Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch as founder and head of software.
- **2017** — REM raised a $2 million seed round, worked on asynchronous low-power processors, joined the RISC-V Foundation, and received a $224,576 NSF Phase I award.
- **2018** — A Microsoft patent naming him as an inventor, Data Object Observation Among Domain-Restricted Containers, was issued as US 9,864,528.
- **2022** — Co-founded Coil with longtime Carnegie Mellon friend Ryan Hall.
- **2023** — Joined Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch with Coil and launched a pay-by-bank checkout product for merchants.
- **2026** — Coil operates as an interactive AI storytelling platform with web and mobile applications.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Reduced Energy Microsystems, identified by Y Combinator as its first chip startup.
- Took part in two Y Combinator batches: Summer 2015 with REM and Winter 2023 with Coil.
- Helped REM raise a reported $2 million seed round backed by Draper Associates.
- Helped REM secure a $224,576 National Science Foundation Phase I award in 2017.
- Named as an inventor on multiple Microsoft patent filings, including US 9,864,528.
- Built the software side of a Carnegie Mellon wearable-computing capstone called lifeLogger.
- Contributed code to the open-source Minecraft X-Ray project while at Carnegie Mellon.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Coil's updated terms describe web, iOS, and Android applications for AI-generated choose-your-own-adventure stories.
- **2026-08** — Y Combinator lists Coil as active in AI, gaming, and media in San Francisco.

## Links

- Website: https://trycoil.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleazar-vega-gonzalez

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/eleazar
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-26