| Hey Austin, | If you’re new, welcome. We curate small, high-caliber rooms for founders and senior tech leaders across Texas. | At GILD, we aim to: | • Bring together CEOs, founders, and operators working through similar challenges
• Create space for honest, off-the-record conversations
• Share insights that actually change how you operate
Upcoming GILD Events: | | GILD AI Forum: For Technical Leaders
This Forum is built for CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and Heads of AI who are past the question of whether to build with AI and deep into the harder ones: what to ship, what breaks, and how to own it when it does. Small room, senior operators, no performative networking. | | GILD AI Forum: CEOs and Business Leaders
A candid, off-the-record dinner for founders and executive operators navigating the AI era. Expect honest conversation about what's actually working, the bets people are placing, and the decisions they wish they'd made sooner. | | What to expect:
• ~12–25 curated attendees
• Structured conversations (not surface-level networking)
• A room designed for real exchange, not pitching | Follow along and stay close to the community:
We announce new gatherings first across our social channels, and because spots fill quickly, being close to the network is the best way to get early access. | → LinkedIn
→ Instagram
→ Full Event Calendar | Subscribing to our calendar is the best way to stay in the loop. We keep things intentionally small, and most events fill through the network. |
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| | | | GILD Podcast | | The GILD Podcast features discussions with CEOs, founders, CTOs, and senior operators actively deploying AI inside real companies. Each episode explores how leaders are implementing AI across product development, hiring, operations, and organizational design. No theory. No generic inspiration. Just practical insight from operators accountable for outcomes. | | New episode: | Gino Ferrand, founder of GILD and Tecla, sits down with Ross Hudgens, founder and CEO of Siege Media, to break down what the collapse of top-of-funnel organic traffic actually means for operators. They dig into why traditional attribution models are losing relevance and what GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) looks like in practice. If your company relies on search-driven growth, this is a conversation worth catching up on. | | | Big Spotlight | Tesla's Stealth AI Hardware Acquisition Points to a Deeper Chip Independence Play | | Tesla quietly disclosed an agreement to acquire an unnamed AI hardware company for up to $2 billion in stock and equity awards, with most of the value tied to performance milestones. The deal was buried in a single sentence in Tesla's Q1 2026 10-Q, never mentioned in their shareholder letter or earnings call, and the timing lines up with the AI5 chip tape-out and the Terafab semiconductor partnership with Intel. For Austin operators watching Tesla's campus become a fully integrated AI and robotics cluster, this signals that the company is building chip independence from the ground up, not just scaling compute.
Read more → |
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| Funding, News & Updates | A German Photonic Computing Startup Picks Austin for Its U.S. Beachhead | Q.ANT, which computes natively in light rather than electricity, announced the opening of its U.S. headquarters in Austin and appointed a former IBM semiconductor executive as CTO. The company is positioning Austin's semiconductor ecosystem as the right home to localize chip manufacturing and reach hyperscalers and data centers looking to cut energy costs at scale. | Read more → | Tesla Is Building a Robot Factory at Giga Texas and It's Moving Fast | Permit documents show Tesla seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of up to $10 billion. Optimus V4 production is targeted for Austin at a scale of up to 10 million units per year. The AI training cluster and the factory building the hardware will share the same campus, a compounding advantage that's hard to replicate.
Read more → | Synthesia Opens Austin Office After $4B Valuation and 70% Headcount Growth | The London-headquartered AI video platform announced Austin as a new base alongside Berlin, with plans to grow global headcount by more than 70% this year following a $200M Series E. Enterprise AI video is scaling fast, and Austin is increasingly the city that growth-stage international companies choose for their North American expansion.
Read more → | Texas State Semiconductor Fund Backs Avant Technology's South Texas Expansion | Governor Abbott announced a $4.83 million Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund grant to Avant Technology for a manufacturing facility expansion in Pharr, expected to create 250 jobs and represent more than $20 million in capital investment. The grant reflects the state's continued commitment to building semiconductor manufacturing depth across the Texas corridor, not just in Austin. | Read more → | |
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| The Conversation: | This week’s conversation points to something deeper than a typical growth cycle. Austin is not just attracting companies. It is becoming where AI infrastructure actually gets built. Data centers, chip labs, and advanced manufacturing are turning the city into a core production hub for the AI economy. The builders shaping how this technology runs are increasingly local. | The real question is not whether Austin is rising. It is whether its leadership networks are keeping pace. Some see a gap between the scale of infrastructure and the depth of operator connectivity. Others believe Austin’s more open, collaborative culture is exactly what gives it an edge. If this is a production wave, not a hype cycle, then proximity matters. The advantage goes to the leaders closest to what is being built and the people building it. | | Hiring Pulse (by Tecla): | LinkedIn's April 2026 Workforce Report for Austin shows demand moving toward hybrid, cross-functional talent, especially where technical and human skills intersect. In one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the U.S., companies are still hiring based on fixed roles, while the market is moving toward operators who can work across product, data, and AI. That gap is starting to show up in slower hiring and increasingly unclear role definitions. | The underlying problem is that hiring is still structured around titles, while the work itself is becoming fluid. The challenge is no longer finding talent, but identifying and matching the right capability to how work actually gets done. That is where the advantage shifts.
Presented in partnership with Tecla, helping AI-forward companies hire top talent across product, engineering, and growth. | | |
If there’s a moment, milestone, or piece of work you’re proud of and think the community would find valuable, reply to this email with a short note and we may feature it in a future issue. | This section is meant to reflect what people in this community are building and learning. | | | Events & Community | Your weekly digest of where to go and who to meet in the Austin tech scene. | Gild Events: | GILD AI Forum: For Technical Leaders
Tuesday, May 26 | 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM CDT | Austin, TX
A small, off-the-record gathering for CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and Heads of AI to compare notes on shipping AI, what breaks, and how to lead through it.
Apply → | GILD AI Forum: CEOs and Business Leaders
Tuesday, June 9 | Austin, TX
A curated room of founders and executive operators sharing what's actually working in the AI era, no pitches, no panels, just candid conversation with people building at the same level.
Apply→
Other events worth checking out: | Tech + Tequila Talk: The Value of Intentional Partnerships in the Tech Ecosystem
Tuesday, May 5 | 6:00–8:00 PM | Station Austin, 701 Brazos St, Austin, TX
A free event featuring guest speaker Kat Rector, Strategic Alliances Manager at Zoho, on building intentional partnerships in the tech ecosystem.
Learn more → | Round Rock Startup Day + Week
Tuesday – Thursday, May 5–7 | All Day | Embassy Suites by Hilton, Round Rock, TX
A multi-day event for founders, operators, and business builders featuring workshops, panels, and a pitch competition.
Learn more → | Beyond Chatbots — The Rise of the AI Agent
Tuesday, May 5 | 6:15 PM – 7:45 PM | ACC Rio Grande: Building 3000, Austin, TX
The Austin Forum's monthly program explores how AI agents move from conversation to autonomous action, and what that shift means for how organizations operate.
Learn more → | I.M.P.A.C.T. — Innovation in Medtech, Pharma, AI & Clinical Trials
Wednesday, May 6 | 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM | Capital Factory, 701 Brazos St, Austin, TX
A monthly gathering for founders, engineers, and clinicians building at the intersection of healthcare and AI.
Learn more → |
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| | See y’all at the next Gild Event! | I’m curious, what did you think of today’s edition? Hit ‘reply’ and share your feedback, I’d love to hear it! | -Gino Ferrand, Founder @ Gild 👊 | Gino is the Founder of Gild, an invite-only community for founders and tech leaders in Austin. He’s also the Founder & CEO of Tecla, an Inc. 5000 company building AI solutions and talented teams of vetted U.S. and nearshore talent to help leading startups build faster. He’s also Founder of Barbaric Games, an indie video game studio creating strategy games with heart. | |
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