Chahal was born in the town of Tarn Taran, near Amritsar, in Punjab, India to Avtar and Arjinder Chahal, of Punjabi-Sikh descent.
In 1985, his parents received a visa to come to the United States and a year later, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in San Jose, California. Gurbaksh is the youngest of four siblings.[2] His parents had arrived with only $25 to their name, and they struggled at menial jobs to make a future for their four children.
On December 15, 1998, aged 16, Gurbaksh Chahal dropped out of high school and started his first venture, ClickAgents. ClickAgents was an advertising network focused on performance-based advertising. Two years later, on November 1, 2000, ValueClick announced it agreed to buy ClickAgents in a $40 million all-stock merger.[3] Chahal had a three year non-compete agreement with ValueClick.
In January 12, 2004, Chahal formed BlueLithium another advertising network which was recognized as an innovator in the online advertising space in a Business 2.0 article. [4]. In 2006, under Chahal's leadership, BlueLithium was named Top Innovator by AlwaysOn. [5]
On October 15, 2007, Yahoo! bought BlueLithium for $300 million in cash. Chahal was 25 years old at the time. He remained CEO of the company through the transition period. [6]
On October 23, 2008, Chahal appeared on the The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss his life and business journey. In his interview, Oprah introduced him as "one of the youngest and also the wealthiest entrepreneurs on the planet Earth". [7] He has appeared on other talk shows such as The Bonnie Hunt Show, The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, CNBC, Current TV and on Neil Cavuto's show.
Chahal appeared on an episode of the FOX TV reality show Secret Millionaire, where he went undercover in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco to give away at least $100,000 of his own money. Chahal was the pilot episode for the series. He is shown donating $90,000, but claims that other donations (which raised the total above $100,000) were "left out of the editing room floor." [8]
On January 8, 2009, he was featured on Extra TV as America's Most Eligible Bachelor. [9] Chahal currently lives in San Francisco, California.
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