David Dao

Co-Founder, GainForest

David Dai is the founder of GainForest, a non-profit grantee of Microsoft’s AI for Earth program, which leverages decentralized technology in co-design with Indigenous people to prevent deforestation. GainForest is working together with local communities in Brazil, Bhutan, Kenya, Paraguay, and the Philippines to implement cryptocurrency infrastructure and is a competitor of XPrize Rainforest. Moreover, David is leading the DS3Lab Climate+AI initiative at ETH Zurich in close collaboration with Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich. He is the director of the joint Kara data dignity research project with Stanford Medicine, UC Berkeley, and Oasis Labs. Previously, he was an engineer in Silicon Valley and a research fellow at Berkeley AI Research (BAIR), Stanford University, and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

David is a global shaper at the World Economic Forum, a core member of Climate Change AI, a climate leader at the Climate Reality Project, and a youth delegate to the UN climate conference.
In his spare time, David explores the rainforests in South America and the deep sea in South East Asia.