Nicholas D'Aloisio (born 1 November 1995) is a British computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is the founder of Summly, a mobile app which automatically summarises news articles and other material, which was acquired by Yahoo for $30M.^[1] D'Aloisio was the youngest person to receive a round of venture capital in technology, at the age of 15.^[2][3] D'Aloisio is currently the founder of a startup called Sphere, which has raised $30M in investment to date^[4]. He is also a student at Oxford University, where he will begin the BPhil Graduate Programme in Philosophy in October 2019 which allows for automatic progression onto the doctorate course (DPhil)^[5], and has published six papers in peer-reviewed philosophy journals.^[6]

D'Aloisio was born in London. His father, Lou Montilla, is an investment banker; his mother, Diana D'Aloisio is a lawyer.^[7][8] He has one younger brother, Matthew. At a young age, D'Aloisio and his family moved to Australia where they resided in Perth and Melbourne.^[9] When he was seven, they returned to London. D'Aloisio was educated at King's College School, an independent school for boys in Wimbledon, south west London.^[10] In the summer of 2014, he took A-level examinations in three subjects.

D'Aloisio studied philosophy and computer science at Hertford College, Oxford University.^[11] In 2019, he will begin the BPhil graduate programme in Philosophy at Oxford University.^[12] Since 2017, D'Aloiso has published a number of academic papers in peer-reviewed journals.^[13] One of them*,* titled "Imagery and Overflow: We See More Than We Report", was published in Philosophical Psychology^[13][14] He presented a second paper at the Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp.^[15] A third paper was published in the philosophy journal Ratio, and three more papers were accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journals Philosophia, Disputatio and Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.^[16][17]. A sixth paper recently received an R&R at Theoria^[13].

In March 2011, D'Aloisio launched an iOS app named Trimit, which used an algorithm to condense text such as emails and blog posts into a summary of 1000, 500, or 140-character text.^[18] With 100,000 downloads,^[8] the app was featured as on the Apple App Store.^[19] Shortly afterwards, Trimit attracted the attention of business magnate Li Ka-Shing, who provided 16-year old D'Aloisio with US$300,000 in venture capital investment.^[20][21] After gathering feedback, D'Aloisio re-designed the app and renamed it Summly in December 2011.^[22]

Summly aimed to solve perceived problems with the way news articles are presented on smartphones,^[20] with the initial version of Summly being downloaded by over 200,000 users.^[23] He hired a team from Israel, including a scientist named Inderjeet Mani, who specialised in natural language processing, to improve the app.^[24][25] With corporate support,^[26] in November 2012, D'Aloisio received US$1 million in new venture funding from celebrities such as Yoko Ono, Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry, in addition to Li Ka-Shing.^[27] In March 2013, D'Aloiso sold Summly to Yahoo! for approximately US$30 million dollars.^[28] He joined Yahoo! as a product manager the same month.^[29]

In January 2014, D'Aloisio announced the launch of Yahoo News Digest at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.^[30] An evolution of Summly, Yahoo News Digest provides mobile users with a summary of important news of the day in the form of a twice-a-day digest.^[31] The articles are automatically and manually curated, as well as summarised into key units of information, known as "Atoms", which include maps, infographics, quotes and Wikipedia extracts.^[32] The Verge praised the app, stating, "Yahoo! News Digest is the boldest and most visually impressive app the company has released since Yahoo! Weather last year." ^[33] It was the winner of the 2014 Apple Design Award.^[34] D'Aloisio resigned from Yahoo! in October 2015.

In late 2015, D'Aloisio co-founded a new startup called Sphere Knowledge. Whilst yet to be made public, Sphere is said to be knowledge-sharing service where users can swap information via instant messaging. ^[4] As of March 2019, the Financial Times reports that the company has raised US$30 million.^[4]

D'Aloisio garnered media attention for being a young entrepreneur. He has been covered by major publications, including ReadWrite,^[35] Business Insider,^[36] Wired,^[37] Forbes,^[38][39] The Huffington Post^[20] and TechCrunch.^[40] D'Aloisio has also made numerous television appearances.^[7]

In 2013, The Wall Street Journal awarded D'Aloisio "Innovator of the Year" in New York City for his work on Summly and at Yahoo.^[41] He was included in Time magazine's Time 100 as one of the world's most influential teenagers.^[42] He also appeared in the 30 Under 30, an annual list of top entrepreneurs by Forbes, and appeared in GQ magazine's 100 Most Connected Men of 2014.^[43] D'Aloisio was placed #30 on the 2014 Silicon Valley 100 by Business Insider. ^[44] He won a Spirit of London Award in December 2012 as Entrepreneur of the Year.^[45] In addition, he was placed #1 in London's Evening Standard Top 25 under 25 for 2013.^[21] D'Aloisio also received 2013's Entrepreneur of the Year by Spear's Wealth Management, as well as a Merton Business Award.^[46]