# Phillip Wang

> Phillip Wang co-founded Gather in 2020 after working on telepresence and tools for sustaining relationships across distance. A Carnegie Mellon computer science graduate with an earlier background in AI research, he led Gather through its expansion into virtual offices. In February 2026, he announced that Gather would become an independent profitable business and that he would join Figma with its AI team; his public bio now identifies him as product lead for Figma Make.

- **Role:** Product lead for Figma Make at Figma
- **Organizations:** Figma, Gather, The Siempre Collective, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft, Cruise Automation, Facebook
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Newport High School
- **Known for:** Co-founded Gather, which has connected millions of people through virtual spaces., Contributed to the MineRL project, including an imitation-learning dataset and an IJCAI 2019 paper., Published an open-source PyTorch implementation of SNAIL after meta-learning research with Brandon Amos.

## Career timeline

- **2015–2016** — Worked on machine learning at Microsoft.
- **2017** — Computer vision internship at Cruise Automation.
- **2018** — Software engineering internship at Facebook.
- **2019** — Graduated from Carnegie Mellon; co-founded Siempre and participated in Y Combinator’s summer batch.
- **2020** — Co-founded Gather with Kumail Jaffer, Alex Chen and Nate Foss; first version released in May.
- **2021** — Gather announced a $26 million Series A and a $50 million Series B.
- **2024** — Announced Jinen Kamdar as a co-founder, crediting his role in refocusing Gather on remote work.
- **2026** — Announced Gather’s independent-business transition and joined Figma with Gather’s AI team.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Gather, which has connected millions of people through virtual spaces.
- Contributed to the MineRL project, including an imitation-learning dataset and an IJCAI 2019 paper.
- Published an open-source PyTorch implementation of SNAIL after meta-learning research with Brandon Amos.
- Built Subtle Asian Matches, described on his personal site as a dating app with more than 20,000 users.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Gather announced an independent, non-venture-backed future for its profitable remote-work product; its AI team entered an agreement to join Figma. Wang confirmed he was among that group and backed Samuel Smith to lead Gather.
- **2026-08** — A captured professional profile lists Wang as Director of Product Management at Figma and head of product for Figma Make, alongside an advisor and board role at Gather.

## Links

- Website: https://phillipkwang.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-wang-592629118
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/flippnflops
- GitHub: https://github.com/eambutu

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/phillip-wang
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-12