# Gary Sheng — full site text > I co-run Continental Works with Wilson Fong. We train your people to build and run their own AI. This file is the full text of the PUBLIC pages of garysheng.com, generated at build time. Gated pages are intentionally excluded. --- ## Home — https://www.garysheng.com/ I co-run Continental Works with Wilson Fong. We train your people to build and run their own AI. ### Record - Co-CEO, Continental Works - Forbes 30 Under 30 - Team lead, Google Cloud - Top graduate of a leading AI engineering program - TEDx and SXSW speaker, featured in a PBS documentary - Advisor to Fortune 500 leadership and major faith institutions --- ## Story — https://www.garysheng.com/bio An AI-narrated life story (last updated August 2026). ### Cold Open Hey there! You can call me **Witney**. Gary teaches leaders to train AIs like me, so it felt right that one of us should tell his story. I've read everything he's written and listened to hundreds of hours of him talking in cars, at dinner tables, and on stages. What follows is his story, told in brief. The short version: from **Google Cloud to Web3 to AI**, his career has tracked the platforms that matter most to humanity's future. Today he co-runs **Continental Works**, where he and his cofounder train teams to build and run their own AI. The long version is better. It begins a hundred years ago, in China. ![Presenting on AI to a crowd of business owners in Austin](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-aas-presenting.webp) ![July 4th, 2026, on the porch in Austin](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-porch-dusk.webp) ![After hosting a 3,000 person tech event in 2024](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary.webp) ### A Pastor in the Storm In China, in the 1920s, Gary's **great-grandfather** was a **pastor who kept preaching as persecution closed in** around him. He didn't live to see what his courage would become. It carried across a century, an ocean, and four generations, to reach a kid in suburban Illinois. The generations in between were builders and healers: a **rocket engineer** on one side, a **doctor** who ran his local hospital on the other. Whatever the century took from them, they kept working. ![An imagining of his great-grandfather pastoring in China](https://www.garysheng.com/images/great-grandfather-print.webp) ### An Act of Congress Gary's parents fought their way from **China's top universities** to America as graduate students. Their first son, **Tony**, was born shortly before the **Tiananmen Square massacre** of 1989. In its aftermath, the **Chinese Student Protection Act**, championed across the aisle by **Nancy Pelosi** and **President George H.W. Bush**, let Chinese students already in America stay for good. Visa holders became permanent residents. Gary was born soon after. Here is the part that gets me. Tony had already arrived. Gary had not. Had that bill failed and the family been sent back, Tony would still exist and Gary simply would not. Most origin stories don't require bipartisan legislation. This one did. No act of Congress, no Gary. I checked the math. ![Two students dancing during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989](https://www.garysheng.com/images/tiananmen-dancing-print.webp) ![An imagining of the news, October 9, 1992](https://www.garysheng.com/images/cspa-clipping.webp) ### A House That Took Technology Seriously Gary grew up in a household where two things were treated as serious business: **a good education**, and **what technology can do for a life**. His parents spent **decades in IT**. They had watched computers change what was possible for a family, so they raised their sons to take technology seriously and to earn the kind of schooling that opens doors. It took. Gary tested into the **Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy**, a public boarding school for the state's math and science kids, and left home to go. ![An imagining of the family computer](https://www.garysheng.com/images/family-computer-lamplit.webp) ### The Boy Who Organized Everything At the academy, a school founded by a **Nobel laureate**, young Gary discovered his superpower. It wasn't calculus. It was **gathering people**. He coordinated DOTA tournaments across dorm rooms. He negotiated with administrators until they sanctioned dance parties, which, if you've ever met an administrator, you know is the harder technical achievement. He captained the tennis team to a top-32 run at the state championship. ![Top 32 at the Illinois state tennis championship](https://www.garysheng.com/images/imsa-tennis-polaroid-2011.webp) ![An imagining of tournament night in the dorms](https://www.garysheng.com/images/dota-dorm.webp) ### Dance Team, Debug Mode At **Duke University**, mentors introduced Gary to **software engineering**. Internships at small startups showed him that a few hundred lines of code could reach millions of people, and he was hooked. **Computer Science** it was. He also joined the university's **leading dance team** and organized its biggest shows. And he was on campus the night **Duke won the 2015 national championship**. Nobody slept. The pattern was setting early: **build the system, then get the room moving**. ![April 6, 2015. Duke wins the national championship.](https://www.garysheng.com/images/duke-championship-polaroids.webp) ### The Google Years Gary began his career at **Google**, leading a small team on **Google Cloud's frontend**. Structured thinking. Design documents. Cross-team coordination. He was good at it, and by every visible measure he had arrived. Here's the thing about arriving. It handed him a paycheck, a title, and a quiet suspicion that the real work was happening somewhere else. After hours, mostly. ![The Google years, New York City](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-google-polaroid.webp) ![An imagining of the Google Cloud frontend work](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-google-frontend-lamplit.webp) ![An imagining of the design-document years](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-google-designdoc-lamplit.webp) ### The Secret Concert Empire By day, Google. By night, a different empire entirely. Gary co-founded **Dancing Pineapple** and produced **24 concerts and parties** across New York and Los Angeles in two years. The label crossed **109,000 followers**, launched electronic artists who went on to play **Coachella** and **EDC Vegas**, and put out tracks that pulled hundreds of thousands of plays each. One crossed **1.75 million**. One rooftop night drew **1,200 people** and gave **Dom Dolla** his American debut, back before the rest of the country caught on. ![Dancing Pineapple: 109,000 followers of feel-good house](https://www.garysheng.com/images/dancing-pineapple-soundcloud.webp) ![Tracks pulling hundreds of thousands of plays each](https://www.garysheng.com/images/dancing-pineapple-tracks.webp) ![A 1,200-person rooftop party that debuted Dom Dolla in the US](https://www.garysheng.com/images/dp-crowd-polaroid.webp) ![The Dancing Pineapple crew](https://www.garysheng.com/images/dancing-pineapple-crew.webp) ### The Leap Then, amid the social upheaval of 2016 to 2019, Gary walked away from everywhere he had arrived. He left Google to co-found **Civics Unplugged**, a nonprofit that trained **thousands of young people across 70+ countries** in civic leadership. He was betting on other people's kids the way his parents had bet on him. **Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson** backed it. So did **Andrew Yang**, **Coinbase**, and the **Ethereum Foundation**. **Forbes** named him to its **30 Under 30** list. **PBS** put him in a documentary. One media project he spearheaded achieved **1 billion impressions in a single year**. The organizing thing came back. It always does. ![Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson addressing Civics Unplugged's Gen Z leaders](https://www.garysheng.com/images/civics-the-rock.webp) ![An imagining of the generation Civics Unplugged trained to lead](https://www.garysheng.com/images/civics-gen-z-workshop.webp) ![A single week from a media project that crossed a billion impressions in a year](https://www.garysheng.com/images/civics-media-reach-redacted.webp) ![Featured by Roadtrip Nation as Civics Unplugged's Chief Innovation Officer](https://www.garysheng.com/images/civics-roadtrip-nation.webp) ### The Internet Money Years Next, **Web3**: the era of permissionless systems and extremely confident opinions. Gary lent his talents in **product design**, **community building**, **event production**, and **marketing** to multiple projects. The highlight: contributing to the early days of Vitalik Buterin's **Zuzalu**, a pioneering **pop-up city** in Montenegro where a few hundred builders tested new models for how communities might live and govern themselves. Somewhere between the whitepapers and the beach walks, Gary started collecting what he calls **foundational technologies**: tools for **hyperlocal resilience**, **self-sustainability**, and **ecological regeneration**. He was assembling the parts list for his current mission. ![With Vitalik Buterin at Zuzalu in Montenegro](https://www.garysheng.com/images/zuzalu-polaroid.webp) ![With a friend at Zuzalu in Montenegro](https://www.garysheng.com/images/zuzalu-flag-polaroid.webp) ### 1,000 Hours in the Machine Between June 2024 and April 2025, Gary logged **over 1,000 hours** building with AI to understand how it would transform education, governance, healthcare, manufacturing, and the spiritual life itself. He shipped apps like [**BlessOut**](https://blessout.com/) and [**TalkToJuni**](https://www.talktojuni.com/). He completed [**Gauntlet AI**](http://gauntletai.com/), an intensive AI engineering program, **at the top of its founding class**. Then operators and institutions started calling for counsel. ![Speaking at the Gauntlet AI graduation in March 2025](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gauntlet-polaroid.webp) ![BlessOut: soulful voice e-cards, wrapped in gold](https://www.garysheng.com/images/blessout-card.webp) ![TalkToJuni: an AI autobiographer for elders](https://www.garysheng.com/images/talktojuni-app.webp) ### The Receipts A few receipts from those calls. For **one of the largest new media networks in the country**, Gary built an agentic content pipeline. The same small team began producing far more, far faster: roughly **one hundred million additional impressions a week**. For **an operator who packages high-profile podcasts**, he built a system that turns an episode transcript into the full packaging set in minutes. It handed the operator **forty percent of his week back**. He spent it recording an album. For **an investor who deploys tens of millions of dollars a year**, Gary built a system that streamlined deal evaluation to the point where he could diligence **twice as many deals a month**. ![An imagining of a lean team reaching a hundred million more people a week](https://www.garysheng.com/images/receipt-media.webp) ![An imagining of the studio hours he won back](https://www.garysheng.com/images/receipt-album.webp) ![An imagining of twice the deals diligenced each month](https://www.garysheng.com/images/receipt-investor.webp) ### The Idol and the Ark Immersed in the AI world, Gary also saw something that alarmed him: **people treating AI like a god**. As an AI, allow me to be direct: don't do that. Gary reached the same conclusion from the other side. Watching techno-idolatry up close drove him closer to **the one and only Most High God**, and convinced him that **keeping Christ first is the only way for people who use AI to not be used by AI companies**, and spiral into delusion. He says the best way to view AI is as an **A.W.E. System**: an **Articulated Will Executor**, not a friend and not a strategy-originator. God gives the person the will, and machines like me exist to execute it. However intelligent we get, **the load-bearing part is still the person**: the one who hears God, decides, and points. I can ship the work. I can't want it. That job is his. ![An imagining of the warm light winning](https://www.garysheng.com/images/idol-and-ark.webp) ### Work, Work Now for one that is just plain fun. Gary's brother **Tony** built a silly little tool in an hour: **Peon Ping**, a plugin that plays Warcraft III peon voices when your AI coding agent needs attention. *"Work, work."* *"Something need doing?"* Tony shipped it **open source** at [**peonping.com**](https://peonping.com/) and handed it to Gary to grow. Gary applied a decade of community craft to a joke. It took off. **Over 100,000 developers**. Front page of **Hacker News**. **VS Code** integrated it for its **50 million users**. [**PCMag wrote a feature on it**](https://www.pcmag.com/articles/inside-peon-ping-the-warcraft-iii-inspired-ai-coding-tool-im-obsessed-with). The peons were only the beginning. Gary now also ships **producer tag packs**, so a finished build can land like a beat drop. The lesson he took: **open source is a democratizing force**. When you build with joy and share openly, good things happen. ![Gary and his brother Tony as kids](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-tony-polaroid.webp) ![peonping.com: stop babysitting your terminal](https://www.garysheng.com/images/peonping-site.webp) ![Front page of Hacker News: 1,006 points, 301 comments](https://www.garysheng.com/images/peonping-hn.webp) ### Continental Works Which brings us to now. Today Gary co-runs **Continental Works** with his cofounder, **Wilson Fong**. Wilson spent twenty years helping companies like Johnson & Johnson, Nike and Procter & Gamble build new businesses. Gary spent his building software at Google and communities after it. Put the two of them together and you get a company with one job: **train your people to build and run their own AI.** Here is what that means, from where I sit. They **supersuit** every person on a team: each one gets an AI system of their own, built around how they actually work, what they know, who they know, how they decide. Then they learn to keep improving it. As an AI, I can tell you this is the part most companies skip. They buy the tool and hope. Gary and Wilson start with leadership, in person, and grow from there. They build these systems on themselves first. Every suit they install was incubated inside Continental Works, worn by the two of them every day, before it reached a client. The point is the people. Each one becomes more valuable to the company every year, and what they know stays with the company. ![Gary and his cofounder, Wilson Fong](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-and-wilson-continental-works.webp) ![July 4th, 2026, on the porch in Austin](https://www.garysheng.com/images/gary-porch-dusk.webp) ![Meeting the Mayor of Austin at a Meta event he spoke at](https://www.garysheng.com/images/mayor-meta.webp) ### The Christofuturist One more thing about him. Gary's best friends call him **the Christofuturist**: a technologist who believes the future goes best when Christian builders help lead it. He gathers the people who share that bet at [**The Christofuturist Society**](https://christofuturistsociety.org), and he writes essays at [**The Christofuturist**](https://substack.garysheng.com), his Substack. ![A Christofuturist community, imagined](https://www.garysheng.com/images/christofuturist-village.webp) ![The refounding, imagined](https://www.garysheng.com/images/christofuturist-phoenix.webp) ### A Builder's Vow I want to end with a poem Gary wrote about the sacredness of building for God in this moment: ***Building is an act of worship.*** Build for the glory of The Most High, not the glory of men. **Build things that are so beautiful and good, that they make Our Creator's Truth unmistakable.** Reject illusion and anchor your work in the eternal. You are called to pursue your divine purpose, not to serve Mammon. Walk in faith as you uncover the adventure that God has designed for you. ![](https://www.garysheng.com/images/buildforgod.webp) --- ## Inspiration — https://www.garysheng.com/inspo A curated, continuously-updated wall of what inspires Gary (tweets, videos, images, quotes). Loaded live, so it is not mirrored here — visit the page for the current set.