Gokhan Urul

I founded Ocak AI as a next-generation Agentic AI Studio — a venture developing interconnected AI agents that collaborate in both virtual and physical worlds.

Our work bridges:
- Reinforcement learning & multi-agent training pipelines
- Web3 and decentralized intelligence
- Human-centered agent design

Core Focus Areas:
- Building a structured AI training framework
- Developing real-time AI-to-AI collaboration protocols
- Integrating governance and ethical layers into agentic systems
- Creating immersive, visual narratives and simulations

Ocak AI is a research studio, among technologists, artists, founders, and thinkers under a shared vision for ethical, decentralized, and purposeful AI.

iMerit is a mission-driven AI data solutions company employing over 5,500 full-time data annotation experts across Bhutan, India, Europe, and the U.S. It partners with Fortune 500 companies to deliver high-quality labeled data across computer vision, NLP, and geospatial domains, supporting sectors like autonomous vehicles, agriculture, medical AI, and finance. The company is funded by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Khosla Impact.

After the merger of Ango AI and iMerit, I took a lead role in successfully integrating the Turkish engineering team into iMerit’s global structure. I guided cultural alignment, operational efficiency, and communication systems, ensuring a seamless unification process across multiple geographies.

During my time at iMerit, I also:
- Led strategic business development initiatives across AI sectors including autonomous driving and medical imaging
- Traveled across India, engaging with diverse local teams and understanding regional innovation capacities

This role allowed me to bridge technical strategy with human-centered leadership, advancing iMerit’s mission to deliver inclusive, high-impact AI solutions globally.

I founded Ango AI with the vision of bridging human insight and machine intelligence through a scalable, ethical, and collaborative AI data infrastructure. The company quickly grew into a globally recognized platform for high-quality data labeling in sectors like medical AI, autonomous vehicles, and robotics.

Key milestones:
- Raised $720K in seed funding from 500 Startups Istanbul and QNBEYOND Ventures
- Built a full-featured AI-powered data labeling platform adopted by enterprise and research clients
- Scaled a remote, interdisciplinary team across Turkey, Europe, and the U.S.
- Merged with iMerit, a global AI data company, in August 2023
- Contributed to the launch and scaling of Ango Hub, which won the Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award (Automation category) in 2024

My work at Ango included product vision, AI workflow design, technical leadership, international business development, and community stewardship. The company served as a platform not just for annotation, but for innovation in human-AI collaboration, with a special emphasis on medical data integrity and agentic systems.

At kolt.com.tr, I collaborated with the founder to explore the intersection of individual meaning, organizational psychology, and day-to-day business culture. This experience marked my first deep dive into the human aspects of leadership, shaping the way I later built and led AI-driven ventures.

Key Contributions:
- Co-developed frameworks for team happiness, purpose alignment, and daily fulfillment in work life
- Assisted in redefining company vision and values, facilitating leadership reflection processes
- Brought insights from philosophy, psychology, and systems thinking into real-world startup environments
- Supported the founder in questioning the why behind organizational structures, leading to long-term strategic clarity

This period became a foundation for how I later positioned myself not only as a tech founder but also as a culture shaper—embedding meaning, compassion, and alignment in the heart of high-growth ventures like Ango AI.

I founded Intest, the first company in the region to specialize in system verification technologies for high-tech industries. Our work focused on real-time software and hardware solutions used in mission-critical environments such as defense, aerospace, and embedded systems.

Under my leadership, Intest developed both custom simulation platforms and automated testing frameworks to support hardware-level verification of complex M2M communication systems.

Key Highlights:
- Developed system-level and unit-level verification environments for real-time embedded systems
- Served leading high-tech clients in defense, aerospace, and industrial automation sectors
- Delivered both proprietary test hardware and embedded software, accelerating certification timelines
- Won the IBM Best Entrepreneur Award – Turkey in 2014 for pioneering this platform

This venture laid the technical foundation for my later work in AI, simulation, and infrastructure design — combining engineering depth with entrepreneurial execution.

ScoreBeyond was a Silicon Valley–based AI-driven edtech startup that reached over 1 million monthly active users, backed by Khosla Ventures and Stanford StartX, and later acquired by LinkedIn.

I served as a strategic partner during the company’s international scaling phase, helping establish and grow its engineering team in Turkey. My role bridged operational needs in the U.S. with high-talent technical execution from Turkey, ensuring seamless collaboration and cultural alignment.

Key Contributions:
- Led talent identification and onboarding of engineers in Turkey
- Built operational workflows between U.S. leadership and Turkish developers
- Facilitated cross-cultural engineering management, team structure, and knowledge transfer
- Advised on maintaining productivity and quality at scale in a distributed model

This engagement helped shape my future ventures, reinforcing my strength in global team architecture, technical culture building, and founder-level strategy across ecosystems.

At Aselsan, I worked across multiple divisions on real-time mission-critical systems, gradually progressing from engineer to team leader. My primary focus was designing and implementing machine-to-machine (M2M) communication architectures for complex electronic systems used in defense and high-integrity environments.

Key Contributions:
- Developed several real-time communication languages and protocols for embedded platforms
- Worked with RTOS and C/C++ to deliver robust software on custom electronic hardware
- Designed and executed both unit-level and system-level tests, improving reliability and safety
- Led the creation of real-world simulation environments for testing systems with 30+ integrated electronic units
- Mentored junior engineers and helped standardize test-driven development workflows

This role cemented my expertise in low-level system architecture, reliability engineering, and communication protocol design.

Selected for an international business internship program at Norsat, a global provider of communication solutions for defense and commercial markets. During this program, I gained early exposure to international business operations, product-market fit in high-tech sectors, and cross-functional collaboration between engineering and business development teams.

Highlights:
- Participated in engineering design initiatives
- Understanding company structure in satellite and RF systems

- Learned foundational business practices that shaped my later work as a founder