Fundraising Fox
Yunkai Zhou
InvestorPartner at FirsthandVC
San Francisco Bay Area
Writes $100K – $5M checks · typically $1.5M
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About
Yunkai Zhou is founder and CEO of Gaida Corporation and previously founded Saige. He spent over 20 years in engineering roles at Microsoft, Google, and Meta, working across infrastructure, AI, web frontend, and mobile technologies. Zhou is an active angel investor and has experience leading cross-functional teams in product development, design, sales, marketing, and operations.
Experience
- Gaida CorporationFounder & CEOcurrent2024 — presentSan Francisco Bay Area
- Park Rangers Capital 🏕️Limited Partnercurrent2025 — presentNew York City Metropolitan Area
- MVP VenturesLimited Partnercurrent2025 — presentSan Francisco Bay Area
- FirsthandVCLimited Partnercurrent2022 — presentNew York City Metropolitan Area
- Foothill VenturesLimited Partnercurrent2017 — presentSan Francisco Bay Area
- MetaDirector of Engineering2019 — 2024San Francisco Bay Area
- MetaPrincipal Software Engineer2019San Francisco Bay Area
- Leap.ai (acquired by Meta)Co-founder & CTO2016 — 2019San Francisco Bay Area
- Compass ConferenceCo-Chair2018San Francisco Bay Area
- Sumo LogicHead of Machine Learning2015 — 2016San Francisco Bay Area
- GoogleSenior Staff Software Engineer / Tech Lead Manager2012 — 2015San Francisco Bay Area
- GoogleStaff Software Engineer / Tech Lead Manager2009 — 2012Greater Pittsburgh Region
- GoogleSenior Software Engineer2006 — 2009Greater Pittsburgh Region
- GoogleSoftware Engineer2006Greater Pittsburgh Region
- MicrosoftSoftware Design Engineer2003 — 2006Greater Seattle Area
Skills & more
+10 more
Resource AllocationDatabase DesignDistributed SystemsSoftware EngineeringSoftware DesignScalabilityAgile MethodologiesAlgorithmsSoftware DevelopmentCloud ComputingLanguages Chinese · English
From Yunkai's professional profile.
Investments
Investor
Per curated public sources.
Colleagues at FirsthandVC
Network1
Investors connected to Yunkai in public investor directories — a warm-intro map.
Frequently asked questions
- Who is Yunkai Zhou?
- Yunkai Zhou is founder and CEO of Gaida Corporation and previously founded Saige. He spent over 20 years in engineering roles at Microsoft, Google, and Meta, working across infrastructure, AI, web frontend, and mobile technologies. Zhou is an active angel investor and has experience leading cross-functional teams in product development, design, sales, marketing, and operations.
- Where does Yunkai Zhou work?
- Yunkai Zhou is Partner at FirsthandVC.
- What check size does Yunkai Zhou write?
- Yunkai Zhou typically writes checks of $100K – $5M.
- What companies has Yunkai Zhou invested in?
- Investments tracked here include Chamber.
- Where did Yunkai Zhou go to school?
- Yunkai Zhou studied at Tsinghua University (B.S., Electrical Engineering); Drexel University (Ph.D., Electrical Engineering).
Same school
Also attended Tsinghua University329
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Also attended Drexel University159
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Shared employers
Also worked at Gaida Corporation1
Also worked at Meta502
+ 496 more
Also worked at Sumo Logic44
+ 38 more
Also worked at Google2,000
+ 1,994 more