# Pankaj Gupta

> Pankaj Gupta is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned tech executive who built Twitter's early recommendation engine (Who-to-Follow, MagicRecs), led Google Pay's engineering across India and globally, scaled Coinbase's India operations from zero, and co-founded Yupp — a crypto-incentivized AI model evaluation platform that raised $33M from a16z before shutting down in March 2026. A Stanford PhD and IIT Delhi alumnus, he has founded four startups, three of which were acquired.

- **Role:** Cofounder and CEO at Yupp (shut down March 2026)
- **Organizations:** Yupp (Ber Sarai Labs), Coinbase, Google, Twitter, Halli Labs / Agara Labs, Stayzilla, Phulki, Sahasra Networks
- **Nationality:** Indian-American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Technology, Computer Science and Engineering (1st in Department), Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, PhD, Computer Science (Best Thesis Award), Stanford University
- **Known for:** One of Twitter's first 30 employees; built Who-to-Follow, the recommendation system credited with driving millions of new user connections daily, Invented MagicRecs (@MagicRecs), Twitter's push-notification recommendation feature, Co-authored academic paper on WTF (Who to Follow) published and widely cited in social graph research

## Career timeline

- **1999-2002** — Cofounder and CTO, Sahasra Networks — acquired by Cypress Semiconductor
- **2008** — Cofounded Phulki, a music search startup — acquired by Saavn
- **2009-2014** — Senior ML Staff and Senior Manager at Twitter; built Who-to-Follow, Tweepcred reputation system, and MagicRecs; one of Twitter's first 30 employees
- **2016** — Relocated from San Francisco to Bangalore; joined Stayzilla as Chief Product Officer and President of Technology
- **2017** — Founded Halli Labs (Bangalore) — Google's first-ever India acquisition, acquired after just 4 months; joined Google to lead Next Billion Users engineering
- **2017-2021** — Engineering Director and Senior Engineering Director at Google; led Google Pay (Tez) engineering across India and APAC; then headed global Google Pay Consumer engineering
- **2021** — Left Google to join Coinbase as VP Engineering and first India Site Lead; oversaw acquisition of Agara by Coinbase
- **2021-2024** — VP Engineering for Consumer Products at Coinbase India
- **2024-2026** — Cofounder and CEO at Yupp (Ber Sarai Labs) — raised $33M seed led by a16z crypto; built AI model evaluation platform comparing 800+ models; shut down March 2026 citing industry shift to agentic AI

## Achievements

- One of Twitter's first 30 employees; built Who-to-Follow, the recommendation system credited with driving millions of new user connections daily
- Invented MagicRecs (@MagicRecs), Twitter's push-notification recommendation feature
- Co-authored academic paper on WTF (Who to Follow) published and widely cited in social graph research
- Founded Halli Labs, which became Google's first acquisition in India (2017) — just 4 months after founding
- Led engineering for Google Pay (Tez) from launch across India and APAC
- First employee and site lead at Coinbase India, building team from zero
- Raised $33M seed round for Yupp from a16z crypto with 45+ angel investors including Jeff Dean, Biz Stone, Evan Sharp, Aravind Srinivas
- Stanford PhD Best Thesis Award; ranked 1st in department at IIT Delhi
- Four startups founded, three acquired (Sahasra Networks by Cypress, Phulki by Saavn, Halli Labs by Google)

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Yupp.ai announced shutdown after less than a year in operation; Gupta cited failure to achieve strong product-market fit and the industry's pivot to agentic AI systems
- **2025-09** — Appeared in Angel Bold Conversations Episode 03 YouTube interview discussing building 0-to-1 ideas from Twitter to Yupp.ai
- **2025-06** — Yupp launched publicly with $33M seed round announced, led by a16z crypto; platform grew to 1.3M users and compared 800+ AI models

## Links

- Website: https://pankaj.medium.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pankajatlinkedin/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/pankaj

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/pankaj-gupta
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-11