Oral History of Gary Morgenthaler Part 2 of 2

Interviewed by Marc Weber, on January 29, 2025 in Mountain View, California,
© Computer History Museum

Gary Morgenthalter is a venture capitalist, computer scientist, and technology entrepreneur.  His career spans operating systems design at Tymshare, pioneering work in relational databases, and decades of guiding startups from concept to market. With Siri, he helped shape product strategy, business models, and investor relations, contributing to a launch that was, by many measures, more than a decade ahead of its time.  

This interview captures Morgenthaler’s reflections on his role in the creation, funding, and launch of Siri, and the system’s roots in earlier AI, speech recognition, and personal assistant concepts. He recounts his work with SRI, Nuance Communications, and the nVention board, where he met Siri’s founders Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Tom Gruber and Siri’s integration of speech recognition, natural language understanding, dialogue management, and “agentic AI” to interface with web services. Finally, he also details early skepticism from investors, rapid problem-solving by the team, a near-launch deal with Verizon, and Steve Jobs’ determined courtship leading to Apple’s 2010 acquisition of Siri.

• Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102809058

Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum’s Oral Histories Collection.

Catalog number: 102809059
Acquisition number: X3654.2007

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