# Jim Gao

> Jim Gao is the CEO and co-founder of Phaidra, a Seattle-based AI company building autonomous, self-learning control systems for the world's most complex industrial facilities, from data centers to vaccine plants. A mechanical engineer by training, he spent roughly a decade designing cooling systems for Google's data centers before teaching himself machine learning on nights and weekends. After AlphaGo, he launched DeepMind Energy, where reinforcement learning cut Google's data-center cooling energy by up to 40 percent. In 2019 he and two co-founders spun that idea into Phaidra, which by 2025 had raised over $120 million to make AI factories radically more efficient.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-founder at Phaidra
- **Organizations:** Phaidra, Google, DeepMind, UC Berkeley
- **Nationality:** United States
- **Education:** B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, B.S. Environmental Science, University of California, Berkeley, AI certification, edX
- **Known for:** Led the DeepMind Energy effort that reduced Google data-center cooling energy by up to 40% using reinforcement learning., Co-founded Phaidra and raised over $120 million across funding rounds., Built AI control systems now managing mission-critical facilities including Merck's 500-acre vaccine manufacturing site.

## Career timeline

- **2011** — Joined Google as a data center engineer; designed cooling systems and ran Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) analysis.
- **2013** — Taught himself machine learning via Andrew Ng's Coursera course, using Google's 20% time to experiment.
- **2016** — Inspired by AlphaGo, proposed applying reinforcement learning to data-center optimization and partnered with DeepMind.
- **2016-2018** — Led DeepMind Energy; RL system cut Google data-center cooling energy by up to 40%, leading a team of 40+ experts.
- **2019** — Co-founded Phaidra with Veda Panneershelvam and Katie Hoffman to productize industrial reinforcement learning.
- **2024** — Phaidra expands AI control to pharma and commercial facilities; Merck named as a flagship customer.
- **2025** — Raised $50M+ Series B led by Collaborative Fund with NVIDIA, Index Ventures, Helena, Sony Innovation Fund; total funding ~$120M.

## Achievements

- Led the DeepMind Energy effort that reduced Google data-center cooling energy by up to 40% using reinforcement learning.
- Co-founded Phaidra and raised over $120 million across funding rounds.
- Built AI control systems now managing mission-critical facilities including Merck's 500-acre vaccine manufacturing site.
- Partnered with NVIDIA, CoreWeave and Applied Digital on agentic liquid-cooling management for AI factories.
- Self-taught machine learning practitioner who moved from mechanical engineering into frontier AI.

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — Phaidra raised a $50M+ Series B led by Collaborative Fund (with NVIDIA, Index Ventures, Helena, Sony Innovation Fund) to build the AI factories of the future; cumulative funding ~$120M.
- **2025-11** — Featured on Sequoia Capital's 'Training Data' podcast discussing building the fourth industrial revolution with reinforcement learning.

## Links

- Website: https://phaidra.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimgao

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jim-gao
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-11