# Tommy Dang

> Tommy Dang is the co-founder and CEO of Mage, an open-source data pipeline and orchestration platform he founded in December 2020 after five years at Airbnb, where he built the Experiences product and a low-code internal tool called Omni used by over 1,000 employees. Mage has raised $11.8M across two seed rounds and grown to 8,700+ GitHub stars, positioning itself as a modern, developer-friendly alternative to Apache Airflow for building, running, and managing data pipelines at scale.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Mage
- **Organizations:** Mage, Airbnb, OnMyBlock, Millennium Health, FlashingDeals
- **From:** San Jose, California, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science, Economics / Interdisciplinary Studies (History, Sociology), University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Raised $11.8M total across two seed rounds from Gradient Ventures, Designer Fund, and Alumni Ventures, Grew Mage open-source repo to 8,700+ GitHub stars on GitHub, Built Airbnb's internal low-code tool "Omni" enabling 1,000+ employees to send billions of emails and manage thousands of promotions

## Career timeline

- **2009-2013** — Studied at UC Berkeley, self-taught coding alongside interdisciplinary studies
- **2011-2013** — Early engineering roles at Millennium Health and FlashingDeals
- **2013-2015** — Co-founded OnMyBlock, a two-sided student housing marketplace in San Diego; grew to 30+ employees and raised ~$6M before shutting down and returning capital to investors
- **2015-2020** — Software Engineer at Airbnb for 5.5 years; joined a small team to launch Airbnb Experiences alongside CEO Brian Chesky; later built and led "Omni", an internal low-code tool used by 1,000+ employees to send billions of emails and manage thousands of promotions
- **December 2020** — Co-founded Mage with Xiaoyou Wang (CTO); left Airbnb to build accessible data tooling
- **January 2021** — Mage raised seed round; began building AI/ML platform for product developers
- **June 2022** — Open-sourced Mage's core data pipeline technology after pivoting from ML platform; quickly gained 2,000+ GitHub stars
- **October 2021** — Mage raised $6.3M seed led by Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused fund), positioning as "Stripe for AI"
- **March 2023** — Mage raised $5.49M seed extension, total funding reaches $11.8M; Mage rebrands focus as modern Airflow replacement for data orchestration
- **2023-Present** — Mage grows to 8,700+ GitHub stars, ~82 employees; launched Mage Pro enterprise tier; latest release v0.9.79 (January 2026)

## Achievements

- Raised $11.8M total across two seed rounds from Gradient Ventures, Designer Fund, and Alumni Ventures
- Grew Mage open-source repo to 8,700+ GitHub stars on GitHub
- Built Airbnb's internal low-code tool "Omni" enabling 1,000+ employees to send billions of emails and manage thousands of promotions
- Co-founded OnMyBlock and scaled from 2 to 30+ employees before an orderly wind-down
- Launched and pivoted Mage from an ML platform to a data pipeline tool based on direct user feedback
- Established Mage as a recognized open-source alternative to Apache Airflow
- Grew Mage to approximately 82 employees by 2024

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Mage released version 0.9.79 of its open-source platform
- **2024-05** — Mage Pro enterprise tier growing as the commercial offering alongside the free open-source version
- **2023-03** — Mage raised $5.49M seed extension bringing total funding to $11.8M
- **2023-01** — Tommy appeared on Category Visionaries podcast discussing Mage as a modern replacement for Airflow

## Links

- Website: https://mage.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dangtommy
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/TommyDANGerouss
- GitHub: https://github.com/mage-ai
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/mageai/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tommy-dang
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-14