# Chappy Asel > The AI Collective • Competitive Bodybuilder • Angel, Scout, Fellow, Advisor • ex-Apple AR/VR, ex-Apple AI/ML, ex-Meta Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/chappy I taught myself to code at 12 and got completely hooked. I spent much of my teens cranking out iOS apps, and with a lot of obsession and some incredible luck, one I built in high school became the #1 homework planner in the world and got acquired while I was still in college. That drive to build at a bigger scale led me to Apple, where I was on the front lines of the top-secret teams that launched the Vision Pro and the early prototypes of Apple Intelligence – presenting multimodal AI agent demos to execs right below Tim Cook. But here's what changed everything. My senior year of college, I wrote my final paper on the technological singularity – right when GPT-3 had just dropped. That research rewired my brain. It helped me realize four things: that AGI is probably the most significant advancement in the history of the universe. That my technical skills weren't durable – AI would be better at coding than me within the decade, and what actually matters is EQ and relationships. That society isn't remotely ready, and we as technologists have a responsibility to be stewards of that transition. And that AI itself is both the threat and the tool we need to solve it. All of that pointed me in one direction: community. When ChatGPT launched, I started building again – this time a weekly meetup with friends we called The GenAI Collective. I also left Apple to co-found Cofactory with a couple of brilliant Stanford PhDs, a venture-backed AI startup (we were Mercor and Cognition's first customers – both now multibillion-dollar companies). But the Collective was where the real conversations were happening – not just about what to build, but about what all of this means. I chose the mission. Today, The AI Collective is 200,000+ members strong with 400+ volunteers running 150+ chapters across 50+ countries – a non-profit building the social infrastructure for AGI. After leading it for over three years, I've since shifted my focus to what's next: I'm now building collective intelligence infrastructure for AI agents – the technical counterpart to what AIC does for people. Outside of this, I'm a competitive natural bodybuilder (INBF/WNBF) and read 50-100 books a year (books.chappyasel.com). If you're building in this space, I'd love to meet you. ## Work Experience ### Chairman of the Board @ The AI Collective Jan 2026 – Present ### Founder & Executive Director @ The AI Collective Jan 2023 – Jan 2026 | San Francisco, California, United States The world's largest AI community – building the human layer for the AI age. We are a global non-profit uniting 200,000+ leaders, builders, and stakeholders across 100+ forums worldwide to democratize the frontier, build trust, and coordinate how society navigates the rapid acceleration of technological progress. ### 👷‍♂️ @ Stealth AI Startup Jan 2026 – Present ### Venture Fellow @ Susa Ventures Jan 2025 – Present Deepening early-stage investment judgment alongside the Susa Ventures team. ### Venture Scout @ Madrona Jan 2025 – Present Making early-stage investments on behalf of Madrona. ### Board Member @ Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Jan 2025 – Present Building a powerful global network of alumni to connect, collaborate, and give back to the TJ community as a board member of the TJHSST Partnership Fund. ### Advisor to the CEO @ Roam Jan 2025 – Present Working with Howard to shape strategy, product, and partnerships that make Roam the AI world’s go-to virtual HQ platform. ### Founder @ Weightlifting App Jan 2017 – Present Tracks and analyzes workouts. Complete with AI-enabled intelligent feedback, advanced analysis, gamified leaderboards, social features, and much more! 100k+ installs, 5k+ MAU, 2M+ sessions, 4.7 star rated, top-10 weightlifting app ### Co-Founder, CEO @ Cofactory Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco, California, United States AI Grant batch 2. Conceived at Stanford, backed by Sequoia Scout, Madrona, etc. The portmanteau of "Company Factory." The future of value creation in an Al-based economy. The industrial revolution for software. ### App Intents, AR/VR Software Engineer @ Apple Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | Cupertino, California, United States • Built and demoed initial prototypes of agentic, multimodal Apple Intelligence • Led API design, review, and refactoring efforts of new cross-platform App Intents framework • Contributed to highly collaborative, cross-functional design meetings with VPG, SWE, AI/ML, Siri, etc. • Hosted developer Q&A and one-on-one consulting sessions at WWDC 2022 after initial public release • Worked on AR/VR UI frameworks team in preparation for release of the Apple Vision Pro at WWDC 2023 ### Fitness Instructor @ F45 Training Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 | Mountain View, California, United States • Lead fitness instructor coaching weekly HIIT classes with 20+ participants ### Engineering Consultant @ Proof Diagnostics, Inc. Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Seattle, Washington, United States • Developed initial website in preparation for public launch in collaboration with design and engineering teams • Implemented components of low-level BLE object transfer protocol between firmware and mobile application • Identified and fixed critical, longstanding flaws in implementation of firmware • Weekly reviews with CTO and CEO on technical and strategic matters ### AI/ML Software Engineer @ Apple Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Seattle, Washington, United States Team: AI/ML MLPT - Adaptive Devices and Personalization Technologies (ADPT) • Conducted a user study to answer key questions and determine metrics for eye tracking on mobile devices • Implemented an algorithm for dynamic eye tracker recalibration based on existing system interactions • Designed a system for pre-loading asynchronous content using interest prediction derived from gaze data • Demoed a proof-of-concept of intelligent UI element selection, leveraging gaze data and voice input • Created a reusable iOS launch daemon for study control and data collection in future studies within Apple • Developed a modular iOS gaze framework, facilitating the development of future gaze-powered experiences • Presented project findings to AI/ML organization executives and team leads with positive reception ### Software Engineer @ Meta Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Menlo Park, California, United States • Led design and implementation of new system-wide interfaces and notification flows to enable relevancy- and permissions-based forwarding to a profile's assigned administrator roles for a major upcoming product release • Drove collaboration with multiple cross-functional teams to integrate seamlessly within existing infrastructure • Implemented both backend (Hack, GraphQL) and frontend (JavaScript), including API mocking functionality • Created an extensive suite of accompanying unit and integration tests to confirm functionality • Worked with the QA team on performing a notification audit to ensure intended product behavior ### SDE I - AI UX @ Xevo Inc. Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Bellevue, Washington, United States ### SDE @ Xevo Inc. Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Bellevue, Washington, United States • Worked on developing SQL / Python transformation scripts and jobs to transform raw user telemetry data into high-level trip / destination / POI info for use in predictive machine learning models • Designed and implemented a Snowflake / AWS Kinesis pipeline to take processed telemetry data and determine user POIs via a reverse geocoding job running periodically on a Javascript Lambda • Developed a DBSCAN-esque MySQL clustering algorithm to aggregate user data into high-order insights • Engineered an in-house tool to visualize user telemetry data using Vue JS, React JS, Mapbox GL, and Python Flask and deployed to AWS using Docker / Kubernetes • Gained expertise in other technologies including Terraform, Mixpanel, and more ### Founder (Exited) @ Homework App Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 • Founded a platform for organizing, tracking, and reminding users of upcoming homework assignments • Sold to Haystack AI in 2019 after negotiating terms for acquisition • Upon acquisition: 338k installs, 63k MAU, 4.7 star rated, #1 global homework app, top-60 productivity app ### Software Engineering @ Lime Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco, California, United States • Initiated and led a complete redesign of the iOS app, unifying and simplifying the company design language • Implemented a persistent rating system, increasing usage by 15% and enabling new performance metrics • Refreshed the in-app referral system to use Branch.io deep links, increasing key user acquisition metrics • Designed and programmed an in-trip zones interface, leading endpoint refactoring efforts to allow for warning users of potential fines that could be faced based on no-service and no-parking zones • Led design and implementation efforts of a backend-driven animated ‘how to ride’ screen, allowing for per-region rules and regulations and helping the government relations team meet per-city requirements • While working at Lime, company headcount and iOS ridership nearly doubled to over one million MAU ### Engineering @ Suplari, Inc. Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Seattle, Washington, United States • Developed a card-based supplier database normalization app to assist in ML model training • Implemented an Auth0-based custom authentication system to mesh with existing sign in methods • Developed an accompanying Python Flask-based Google Cloud endpoints backend for on-the-fly changes to categorization parameters and cloud storage, processing of normalization results ### Software Engineering @ Gigwalk Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco, California, United States • Assisted in the development of a public JavaScript API for use both internally and externally by third parties which eventually came to comprise Gigwalk’s primary source of business • Designed and programmed 100+ unit tests using during continuous integration to ensure public API stability ### Product Design @ Rokid Corporation Ltd Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Hang Zhou, China • Shadowed artificial intelligence, deep learning, and scripting development efforts • Assisted with app string translation (Mandarin Chinese, English) and multilingual product testing in preparation for launch in the United States ### Mobile Engineering @ Gigwalk Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco, California, United States • Worked with chief mobile developer on feature scoping for enterprise iOS application • Developed new features for both iOS and Android mobile workforce management platforms ### Development Intern @ Electronic Arts Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Redwood City, California, United States • Participated in orientation program introducing all stages of game development, testing and marketing • Worked in new product development group testing unreleased games ### Development Intern @ Respawn Entertainment Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Los Angeles, California, United States • Worked with core development team providing in-depth early-stage testing and bug reporting • Shadowed all stages of the game development process ## Education ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Computer Science Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering ### Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/chappyasel - Portfolio: http://chappyasel.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/chappy JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/chappy/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13