Say Hello to Wikipedia’s Younger, Tech-Savvier Sibling

Golden

Wikipedia has its uses—reading movie plots, finding out Jude Law’s birthday, etc. But in the age of accelerating technology, Golden wants to be the Wiki for info on startups, cryptos, and genetic sequencing.

Jude Gomila, Golden’s founder and CEO, told me that as an angel investor, he found it difficult to get deep info on CRISPR or “unsolved problems in physics” (same). He likes Wikipedia but says it often takes down content for not meeting “notability” requirements.

Enter Golden, which launched Tuesday with the aim of cataloging the millions of topics Wikipedia won’t touch, then cross-linking them with related pages, academic papers, press clippings, and videos.

“People are essential,” Gomila says, for consensus, editing, and expertise…but “automation is the leverage.”

• Gomila claims Golden’s AI makes human contributors 100x more productive by trawling the web and scraping data.
• It also flags “markety, buzzword” language for human review.

Will it work? Golden’s got prominent backers—it raised $5 million in an a16z-led seed round. But we won’t know for sure until teachers approve it as a research source.