Gilman Louie

Last updated
Gilman Louie
Gilman Louie 2008.jpg
Louie in 2008
Born1960 (age 6364)
Education San Francisco State University (BSBA)
Occupation(s) Venture capitalist, former video game designer
Known forCEO of Spectrum Holobyte, co-founder and CEO of In-Q-Tel

Gilman Louie (born 1960) is an American technology venture capitalist who got his start as a video game designer and then co-founded and ran the CIA venture capital fund In-Q-Tel. [1] With his company Nexa Corporation he designed and developed multiple computer games such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon flight simulator series. His company later merged with Spectrum Holobyte where he was CEO until its acquisition by Hasbro, after which he became Chief Creative Officer and General Manager of its Games.com group. He has served on a number of boards of directors, including Wizards of the Coast, Niantic, Total Entertainment Network, FASA Interactive, Wickr, Aerospike, the Chinese American International School, Markle Foundation, Digital Promise, and Maxar Technologies. He is chairman of the Federation of American Scientists and Vricon. [2] [3] He is a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. [4] [5]

Contents

Early life and education

Louie was born in San Francisco. [6] He graduated in 1983 from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration. [7] [8] In 1997, he attended the then thirteen-week Advanced Management Program (AMP) and International Senior Management Program (ISMP) at Harvard Business School. [7]

Career

Video games

He built a career in the video game industry, founding a company in 1981 while still in college. He called it NEXA Corporation, based on a department at SFSU that was a combination of the humanities and the sciences. In 1986 his company merged with Spectrum Holobyte via a shell company called Sphere, Inc., with Louie as CEO, and then he became CEO of Spectrum Holobyte in 1992. In 1992 he acquired MicroProse. He designed and developed the F-16 Fighting Falcon flight simulator series (19841998). He was also chairman of Spectrum HoloByte when it published Tetris (1987), based on a disputed license. His company was acquired by Hasbro Interactive in 1998, where Louie served as Chief Creative Officer and general manager of the Games.com group. [9]

Venture capital

In 1999 he co-founded and became the CEO of the non-profit Peleus (later In-Q-It and then In-Q-Tel). It was a company created with $30 million in seed money from the US federal government, [6] and intended to help enhance national security by connecting the United States Intelligence Community with venture-backed entrepreneurial companies and making venture capital style investments in new technologies.

As of 2021, Louie is a partner of Alsop Louie Partners, [1] a venture capital fund focused on helping entrepreneurs start companies. Known investments of Alsop Louie Partners include Niantic, Inc., Wickr, Cleversafe, Ribbit, Zephyr Technologies, Gridspeak, Netwitness, and LookingGlass Cyber Solutions.

Board activities

Louie has served on a number of boards of directors, including Wizards of the Coast, Total Entertainment Network, Direct Language, FASA Interactive, Netwitness, Motive Medical, Wickr, Gridspeak, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), [3] Zephyr Technologies, the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation, Aerospike, GreatSchools and the Chinese American International School in San Francisco. He serves on the board of the Markle Foundation and is on the boards of Greatschools.org and Digital Promise. Louie is chairman of the Federation of American Scientists as well as the Mandarin Institute. In September 2015, he was elected Chairman of the Board for a US-based 3D Geospatial Mapping company called Vricon. [2]

Other activities

In 2018, Louie was appointed to the United States National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence. [10] Gilman served as vice chairman of the standing committee on Technology, Insight-Gauge, Evaluate and Review for the United States National Academies. He also chaired the committee on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies for the United States National Academies that produced two reports. [11] [12]

In 2009, representing his company Alsop Louie Partners, he sat as a member of the committee for The Symposium on Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow's Warfighter working alongside Raytheon. [13]

In May 2022, Louie was appointed to serve as a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. [14] In June 2022, he was appointed to serve as a member of the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. [15]

Credits

Video games designed, programmed and/or produced:

Awards

Related Research Articles

<i>Tetris</i> 1985 video game

Tetris is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. It has been published by several companies on more than 65 platforms, setting a Guinness world record for the most ported game. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, in 1996 the rights reverted to Pajitnov, who co-founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.

John Wilbur Stealey Sr. is an American game developer and publisher who founded MicroProse with Sid Meier. He also founded and is the current CEO of iEntertainment Network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MicroProse</span> American video game company

MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spectrum HoloByte</span> American video game developer and publisher

Spectrum HoloByte, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher. The company, founded in 1983, was known for its simulation games, notably the Falcon series of combat flight simulators, and for publishing the first version of Tetris outside the Soviet Union. Spectrum HoloByte published games for various home computers and video game consoles.

In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability. The name "In-Q-Tel" is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoë Baird</span> American lawyer

Zoë Eliot Baird is an American lawyer and Senior Counselor for Technology and Economic Growth to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. She was CEO and President of the Markle Foundation from 1998 to 2022. She is known for her role in the Nannygate matter of 1993, which arose when she was nominated by President Bill Clinton as the first woman to be Attorney General of the United States, but she withdrew her nomination when it was discovered she had hired undocumented immigrants and failed to pay Social Security taxes for them. Since 1998, she has led the Markle Foundation.

The Falcon line of computer games is a series of simulations of the F-16 Fighting Falcon combat aircraft. The games, mostly published by Spectrum HoloByte, were noted for their high level of realism unseen in contemporary simulation games.

<i>Falcon 3.0</i> 1991 video game

Falcon 3.0 is a combat flight simulator video game developed by Sphere Inc. and published by Spectrum HoloByte in 1991 as third official main entry in the Falcon series of the F-16 Fighting Falcon simulators.

Karen Richardson is an American executive in the software industry.

William T. Coleman III was an American businessman who served as the CEO of Veritas Technologies. He was also a partner at Alsop Louie Partners. He was the founder, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of various high-profile corporations, including BEA Systems and Cassatt Corporation, and had been a director at Symantec Corporation since 2003.

Tara L. Lemméy is an American entrepreneur, inventor, designer, technology expert, and innovation strategist. She is CEO and founder of LENS Ventures, an innovation and investment firm based in San Francisco. Lemméy was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2013 by Fast Company (magazine) and one of the MCP 1000: The Most Creative People in Business. She is an inventor with over seventy US and international utility and design patents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Mencher</span>

Marc Mencher is an American executive in the video game industry, who has written multiple articles and books about gaming careers, such as the 2003 book Get in the Game: Careers in the Game Industry. He is best known as co-founder and CEO of the recruiting agency GameRecruiter.com, and is a frequent contributor to game developer trade magazines and websites such as Gamasutra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Breyer</span> American venture capitalist (born 1961)

James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.

<i>Falcon</i> (video game) 1987 video game

Falcon is a combat flight simulator video game and the first official entry in the Falcon series of the F-16 jet fighter's simulators by Spectrum HoloByte. Originally developed by Sphere for Macintosh and MS-DOS in 1987 and ported to several platforms between 1988 and 1992, the game earned commercial success and critical acclaim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Letitia Long</span>

Letitia A. Long served as a civilian in the U.S. Navy and the Intelligence Community between 1978 and 2014, retiring as the fifth Director the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the first woman to lead a major U.S. intelligence agency, in October 2014. She currently is the Chairman of the Board for the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Volpi</span>

Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stu Shea</span> American business executive

Stu Shea is an American business executive and leader and intelligence professional serving in a leadership capacity to public and private companies, as well as an advisor to government agencies, private equity investors, and academic institutions. Shea is the former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Peraton, a national security technology company. He is also the former president and chief operating officer of Leidos, chief operating officer of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and founder and emeritus chairman of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.

Wickr is an American software company based in New York City. It is known for its instant messaging application of the same name. The Wickr instant messaging apps allow users to exchange end-to-end encrypted and content-expiring messages, and are designed for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems. Wickr was acquired by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in mid-2021. The free version of the app was discontinued in December 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence</span> US independent commission

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) was an independent commission of the United States of America established in 2018 to make recommendations to the President and Congress to "advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States".

Devaki Raj, who grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, is chief digital and AI officer in the strategy office at Saab, Inc. and CEO and co-founder of CrowdAI.

References

  1. 1 2 "Alsop-Louie Partners FAQ". Alsop-Louie Partners. Archived from the original on January 12, 2011.
  2. 1 2 Rodriguez, Giovanni. "Meet The VC Who's Betting On A Better World In 3D: Gilman Louie". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-02-11.
  3. 1 2 University of California, Los Angeles, Thirty-Thirty Seminar Series, March 23, 2011 Archived July 14, 2014, at the Wayback Machine , Panelist Biography
  4. "Secretary Blinken Selects Members of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board". United States Department of State. Retrieved 2023-09-19.
  5. House, The White (2022-05-04). "President Biden Announces Appointments to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and the National Science Board". The White House. Retrieved 2023-09-19.
  6. 1 2 Van Slambrouck, Paul (January 14, 2000). "The spy who came in from Silicon Valley". Christian Science Monitor . Retrieved December 12, 2021.
  7. 1 2 Staff writer (March 29, 2001). "Fact sheet - Gilman Louie". Venture Capital Journal . Retrieved December 12, 2021.
  8. "Gilman Louie". Federation Of American Scientists. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  9. Public Affairs Office (April 24, 2007). "A few among many notable San Francisco State University alumni". San Francisco State University . Retrieved December 12, 2021.
  10. Shead, Sam. "Ex-Google CEO To Lead US Government AI Advisory Group". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  11. Persistent Forecasting of Disrupive Technologies, Report 1 of 2, The United States National Academies Press, 2009.
  12. Persistent Forecasting of Disruptive Technologies, Report 2 of 2, The United States National Academies Press, 2010.
  13. Report for The Symposium on Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow's Warfighter, The United States National Academies Press, 2009.
  14. "President Biden Announces Appointments to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and the National Science Board". The White House. 2022-05-04. Retrieved 2022-05-04.
  15. "Secretary Blinken Selects Members of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board". United States Department of State. Retrieved 2023-09-19.