Gather

Gather is a virtual office platform that uses 2D pixel-art environments and proximity-based video chat to simulate in-person workplace interactions for remote teams.¹ Founded in 2020 by Phillip Wang, Kumail Jaffer, Alex Chen, and Nate Foss, the company went through Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch and raised $77 million across Series A and B rounds led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures.³⁴ In February 2026, the company spun out its remote-work product as an independent, profitable business while its AI team, including CEO Wang, joined Figma.⁷

Origins

The founding team met at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT.³ Wang graduated from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science; co-founders Alex Chen and Nate Foss were MIT graduates whom Wang met during college internships.³ Before Gather, the group experimented with custom wearables that would show who was available to talk, then pivoted through apps, VR prototypes, and full-body robotics before settling on web-based 2D virtual spaces.³

The team went through Y Combinator in Summer 2019.¹ When the pandemic forced offices to close in early 2020, the founders refocused their telepresence experiments on the current product.² Gather launched publicly in May 2020.¹

Product

Gather's interface uses a top-down pixel-art aesthetic in the style of classic 16-bit video games.⁵ Users control customizable avatars that move through 2D environments -- offices, event venues, or social spaces -- rendered in a web browser or desktop app.⁵ The platform uses spatial audio: a user hears another person's voice louder when their avatar is nearby and softer as they move away.³ The company built its own video-conferencing stack from scratch because existing solutions did not integrate well with spatial audio.³

Virtual offices include desks, conference rooms, and common areas.⁸ Teams can embed features like "shoulder taps" to prompt a coworker to chat, or communal areas such as pool tables where avatars can congregate.³ Users can also build custom spaces through a web-based map editor or programmatically through an API.⁵ In an interview with Shortwave, Wang described Gather's internal use: "We use it as the office, just as you would in the physical world, where we have all our meetings."⁸

By 2023, the company had narrowed its focus to the virtual office use case, serving roughly 10,000 teams.⁹

Funding

Gather raised a $26 million Series A in March 2021 at a $200 million valuation, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Index Ventures, YC Continuity, and angel investors including Dylan Field (Figma's CEO), Jeff Weiner (former LinkedIn CEO), and Kevin Hartz.³¹⁰ At the time of the Series A announcement, the platform had over four million users and about $400,000 in monthly revenue, most of it from one-off events rather than recurring office subscriptions.³²

In November 2021, the company closed a $50 million Series B co-led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, bringing total funding to approximately $77 million.⁴¹² Additional Series B participants included Dylan Field, Jeff Weiner, Juan Benet, Lachy Groom, Elad Gil, YC Continuity, Neo, and Haystack.⁴

NeurIPS 2020

One of Gather's earliest high-profile deployments was the NeurIPS 2020 conference, a major machine-learning research event held entirely online in December 2020.⁶ The conference had over 22,000 registrants and nearly 2,000 poster presentations.⁶ Organizers chose Gather over individual Zoom calls -- the format used at prior online conferences -- because the shared virtual space allowed attendees to see who was visiting which poster and enabled the kind of serendipitous encounters typical of physical conferences.⁶

The NeurIPS team designed custom poster-room templates, each accommodating up to 400 concurrent users for smooth interaction.⁶ They budgeted server capacity for up to 10,000 simultaneous attendees, though peak concurrent attendance did not exceed 2,000.⁶ In a post-conference survey, 75% of poster-session attendees reported enjoying the experience.⁶

Refounding and Pivot

In late 2024, Wang described Gather as having been "refounded" twice: once when the pandemic shifted the team toward its metaverse vision, and again when they refocused on making remote work the core product.⁹ As part of the second refounding, Jinen Kamdar, who had joined as Chief Product Officer, was named a co-founder in October 2024.⁹ Wang credited Kamdar with defining the company's product direction and culture around "hunger and excellence in craft."⁹

Spin-out and Figma

On February 9, 2026, Gather announced it was splitting into two paths.⁷ The remote-work product, described as profitable and growing, was spun out as an independent, non-venture-backed small business.⁷ In the blog post, the company acknowledged that while the product was "valuable and sustainable, it isn't positioned for venture-scale growth in the way we originally envisioned."⁷

Separately, Gather's AI team entered an agreement to join Figma.⁷ Wang confirmed on X that he would be among those joining Figma.¹¹ The company framed the Figma move as a natural fit: the AI team had been exploring tools for people "designing and building software" and found "remarkable alignment in vision and values" with Figma.⁷