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Google cofounder Larry Page made a rare public appearance during a Y Combinator event for startups held in San Francisco, California in December, Business Insider has learned.
Page showed up at an "office hour" for a group of the Fall 2024 class of startups during the final days of the event, where he listened to founders talk about their business ideas, according to a person who attended. Y Combinator spokesperson Lulu Meservey confirmed Page's attendance at the event.
Y Combinator is a startup incubator that holds seasonal classes — known as "batches" — where budding startup founders can network and get advice from Silicon Valley luminaries.
Page was brought along to the event by Y Combinator group partner Paul Buchheit, the attendee said, adding that Page also shared some anecdotes about the early days of Google. The person asked to remain anonymous because they had not been permitted to speak to the media about the event.
A public sighting of Page is extremely rare these days.
He and cofounder Sergey Brin stepped away from their executive roles at Alphabet in 2019, giving the pair time to pursue other business interests such as flying cars and disaster relief. The pair continue to sit on the Alphabet board and hold shares of a special voting stock that gives them ultimate control of the company.
While Brin has returned to work on AI projects at Google, Page has remained more distant. He continues to financially support Pivotal, a startup working on electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs.
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