Gurbaksh Singh Chahal (born July 17, 1982) is an Indian-American entrepreneur who has founded, managed, and frequently sold several internet advertising companies.

[5] Chahal was born on July 17, 1982, in Tarn Taran Sahib, a city near Amritsar in India's Punjab state, in a Sikh family.

[9][2] His father, Avtar Singh, was a police officer and mother, Arjinder Chahal, was a nurse in Tarn Taran Sahib.

In 1985, during the aftermath of the Khalistani insurgency, Chahal's parents emigrated to the United States, his father having won a green card lottery.

[14] His family were devout followers of Sikhism and Chahal and his brother used to wear a turban, a type of headwear based on cloth winding.

[15] Although his parents hoped he would become a doctor, 16-year-old Chahal dropped out of Independence High School in 1998 to pursue a career in internet advertising.

[19] After leaving high school, Chahal launched a digital advertising company called ClickAgents, which as recently as 2008 he asserted was the riskiest decision he has ever made.

[26][27][25] In 2004, Chahal founded BlueLithium, a company that specialized in behavioral targeting, a technique whereby web users' online habits are tracked in order to show customized ads.

[3][22] The ad-tech industry praised it with Business 2.0 listing it among the 11 most disruptive innovations of 2006,[28] and by the same year, it had expanded operations to other countries, having purchased AdRevolver.

[33] In 2009, Chahal launched gWallet, a venture that partnered with brand and game developers to bring users virtual currency offers.

[35][36] The startup's research showed that only 2-4% of users chose to pause a video game and opt to explore brand engagement and any offers like earning a virtual currency.

[35] In 2010, Chahal founded RadiumOne, another online ad company[37] of a slightly different genre,[38] which started as a loyalty and rewards program[4] but later migrated to the targeted-advertising domain, having acquired multiple social-media-centered startups.

[46] In 2019, Chahal founded TaaraLabs, an incubator helping build companies to address problems in the fields of artificial intelligence, IoT, and data sciences.

[52] The website was subject to several controversies regarding the accuracy of its reporting,[53][54][55] and all of its accounts were suspended from Twitter in June 2022 for violations of the site's policy on spam and platform manipulation.

[6] In the same year, Chahal's alma mater Evergreen Valley College awarded him an honorary degree in Business Administration,[57] and Pace University conferred the Leaders in Management Award and a Honorary Doctorate in Commercial Sciences; he had earlier established an endowed entrepreneurial scholarship program at the university.

[66][67][48] It had liaised with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to provide employment scopes for rural women in Maharashtra, India.

[68] In 2020, Chahal donated face masks, test kits, personal protective equipment and ventilators to hospitals across several countries (including Hong Kong and India) during the Coronavirus pandemic, and extended procurement networks to help governments in mitigating the supply-chain chaos.

[84][85] In August 2013, the San Francisco District Attorney's Office (SFDA) charged Chahal with committing acts of domestic violence against his girlfriend.

[88] He was sentenced to three years' probation, ordered to pay a fine, and compelled to undergo a 52-week domestic violence training course along with 25 hours of community service.

[91][92] In 2016, after he committed acts of domestic violence against a second woman, the San Francisco County Superior Court found Chahal guilty of violating the terms of his September 2014 probation.

[93] The California Courts of Appeal upheld the verdict in April 2018[94] and Chahal served six months in San Francisco County Jail.