Tony Gao
YGS 2015
Cornell University
Architect designing systems across platforms @ Meta, real-world infrastructure, and AI
Tony started at YG with a drive to shape the physical world. At Cornell, he studied architecture, and he was rising fast in the field. But he made a deliberate pivot, going back to UPenn to learn software engineering because he wanted to close the gap between what he could imagine and what he could ship. That decision led him to Meta, where he became one of the core product designers behind the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Since then, he's led end-to-end system design and delivery across unicorn startups and blue-chip enterprises, from wearables AI inference, real-time orchestration, financial trading platforms, and complex physical-world systems.
“YGS developed my intuitive thinking and gave me fundamentals that apply across disciplines and remain effective throughout my life.”
