Gilad Berenstein is an Israeli-born AI entrepreneur, board director, and venture capital investor with two decades of experience at the intersection of technology, travel, hospitality, and lifestyle businesses. Based in Seattle, he leads Brook Bay Capital, an AI-focused investment firm backing category-defining companies across travel, hospitality, fintech, and experiential consumer platforms. He serves on the boards of established organizations and high-growth startups, including Virtuoso, Faye, Mindtrip, ResortPass, and Abra, and is a trusted advisor to founders, our top industry CEOs, and institutional investors.

Gilad is recognized as one of the industry’s leading voices on artificial intelligence, personalization, and what he calls the “Great Commoditization”, the structural shift reshaping how businesses are built and scaled, how consumers are served, and where competitive advantage resides. His writing and speaking explore a dynamic future in which products and experiences adapt to individual needs. His “Best of Both” thesis makes the case for a hybrid future: businesses that combine human connection, judgment, and creativity with the expanding capabilities of AI. He helps CEOs and Founders turn these ideas into practical strategies for the AI age.

For Gilad, AI has never been an abstract concept. As a child, he watched his father, a machine-learning pioneer in the 1990s, build technology for real-world use, a formative experience that shaped his belief that technology should enhance human potential. He went on to found and lead Utrip in 2011, a pioneering AI travel company that helped more than 200 million travelers and brought early, large-scale AI integrations to global hospitality brands. Today, he regularly speaks at major global conferences, co-hosts the Travel Tech Insider podcast, mentors the next generation of founders, and is a convener of our industries top thinkers across his AI Dialogues, the Travel Tech Innovation Summit, and more!