Title:GTA Alumni Spotlight: Utsav Gupta (L’15)

Meet Utsav Gupta (L’15), Founder and CEO of Filarion and GTA Board Member!

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Utsav Gupta. I hold a Bachelor of Science in bioengineering with a focus in biotechnology and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from UC San Diego. I went on to be a Juris Doctor from Georgetown Law, and had an amazing time there. I actually just began as a Master’s student studying liberal arts at Stanford University. I can do that part-time, which has been great so I can focus on building my tech company. My planned focus is on the post-AI era. I’m hoping to write a thesis on that. This program will take anywhere from 4 to 6 years to complete. 

Professionally, I am the founder and CEO of Filarion. I lead work on the intersection of AI, and also in spatial computing. Previous to this, I was a patent litigator. I worked at the law firms Dechert LLP and Tensegrity Law Group, where I managed complex and high-stake technology cases from smartphones to microfluidic chips used for single cell sequencing to portable X-ray devices. 

Beyond my professional career, I also have a civic one. I serve as a utilities commissioner in the city of Palo Alto. I help provide oversight of a $475 million annual utilities budget and advise on climate, sustainability, fiber deployment, and grid modernization. The city of Palo Alto is a unique city in California – we are the only city that owns and operates all of our own utilities, so all five essential services. I am particularly excited that we are expanding into the home internet service provider space. We will be providing municipal fiber deployment. I am also very focused on climate and sustainability, working to improve our water quality. We are also focused on trying to decarbonize and decommission our gas utility, which is both a technical and policy-driven issue.

How did your time at Georgetown influence your career path in the tech industry?

Georgetown has been a tremendous influence, both as a student and as an alum. I’ve been happy to serve on the Board of Visitors for the Law School with Dean Treanor. The experiences at Georgetown Law were just incredible. I got to be very early on immersed in cutting edge intellectual property and technology law. Being in DC, you get these opportunities you wouldn’t get anywhere else. I was a clerk for the Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Pat Leahy, where I helped draft judicial nomination memos, policy papers on issues like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, electronic border searches, and intellectual property. These experiences really helped show me how deeply technology is intertwined with public policy and governance. I think something that is really important as you build a tech company is to always think about the ethical, humanistic, and societal implications of what you’re doing. Georgetown Law really gave me that lens.

At Georgetown, I also had the opportunity to serve as a law clerk on the International Trade Commission Office of Unfair Import Investigations. As a student, I got to work on adversarial patent disputes involving global technology companies. It really gave me a front row seat to how innovation and intellectual property disputes can shape issues like international trade. 

Another aspect of Georgetown that I think was so influential to me was the opportunity to be involved in communities. I got to serve as executive editor of the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review. I also helped lead the South Asian Law Students Association. 

In summary, these experiences showed me that issues aren’t just technical, or technically legal, but they are interdisciplinary and require collaboration. That mindset helped me transition from a legal patent litigation career to tech entrepreneurship. In the work I do, I need to combine both my legal expertise, science and engineering perspectives, strategy, and the ability to collaborate with people to build innovative things. I’m very thankful to Georgetown for that education.

What is the mission and vision behind Filarion, your tech company?

Our mission is to create technology that makes the world more accessible, equitable, and intelligent. We are pioneering two focuses right now. The first is in AI-driven legal solutions. We want to help speed up and in some cases automate litigation processes and do them up to 1000 times faster and 90% cheaper than having attorneys spend time doing them. One implication of that is it allows attorneys to avoid mundane work and instead think through strategy. It enables a broader access to justice by reducing the cost of having to assert your claims. Right now we are focused in my wheelhouse of patent litigation, but the tools will be applicable across many legal contexts.

The second focus is in spatial computing, an umbrella term for things like augmented reality and virtual reality. We are working on how humans will interact with these tools and with the physical world. We are supporting this innovation with patents we have in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China. We’ve had international recognition for the novelty of this technology. There are multiple tech companies working on how to do the next thing post-smartphone. A lot of these companies think it’s going to be spatial computing, so it’s a very exciting place to be working in right now.

Overall, our vision is to empower people – right now those are lawyers and also everyday users in the spatial computing space. We are trying to break down barriers and create new possibilities in this next AI era.

How has your interdisciplinary experience shaped your approach to creating accessible technology?

My background has helped me see how technology is not just code and hardware; it is a human system. At Filarion, we aren’t just trying to develop tools that are technologically powerful, but also impactful for society and for the people who use them. That’s shown by making complex litigation affordable – or at least some aspects of it, or ensuring that we have spatial computing interfaces that are intuitive and inclusive. It’s that wide lens that my education and background provided that is really helpful as you think about how technology interacts with people and society.

What do you wish more people knew about the tech industry?

When people think of the tech industry, they think of tech titans and all these cool innovations and how it makes them more efficient. The humanities, ethics, and governance are as essential as building a product, engineering the technology, and marketing it. I do think tech companies, especially in Silicon Valley, do try to think through that. We think of it through a futurism lens, and we need folks in DC to help us think through the societal implications of what folks are doing here. The collaboration between tech and policy – you see that in a lot of successful companies. 

What is your favorite app or website, and why?

I’m going to go old school…I have to say Wikipedia! It’s still the gold standard of representing what technology should do, which is democratizing access, in this case to information. It does it in a way where it doesn’t lock you into some proprietary system where the data is enclosed in their specific format and you have to login or pay to access it. It’s an open, anywhere, easily preservable tool that provides the full encapsulation of human knowledge. If you want to learn anything you start at Wikipedia. I think that’s so powerful, which is why I’d have to choose it as my favorite. 

What is one quick piece of advice you would give to a Georgetown student that is interested in tech?

I’d say don’t silo yourself – be broad. Tech is not just for computer scientists or technologists. Lawyers, policy thinkers, designers, liberal arts graduates, and all kinds of careers are going to have critical roles to play in tech. Georgetown is such a special place, so definitely take advantage of all the interdisciplinary opportunities there are available to you. If you’re studying art history, take a technology class. If you’re a biology major, go ahead and intern on the Hill or somewhere in DC. Take advantage of it, use your @georgetown.edu email address to open doors. The ability to speak across disciplines is increasingly a skill that will open doors for you, including in tech. 

For more GTA Alumni Spotlights, click here.