Luciano Bueno

Luciano Bueno is a proud Brazilian-American entrepreneur and second-time founder. He started at 16, selling t-shirts door-to-door to help put food on the table for his family, an experience that shaped his belief in hard work, resilience, and perseverance.

Today, that same mission lives on him: putting food on the table, multiplied by 1 billion times. He is the Founder and CEO of GALY, a deep-tech company building a biomanufacturing platform that grows the first-ever cocoa/chocolate, cotton, and other products in their purest form and that everybody loves.

GALY operates a traceable process that is 10× faster, 500× more productive, and 80% more resource-efficient than traditional methods, independent of land or weather.

Before founding his first company, Luciano built his career at Deloitte, working in consulting and audit with clients in fashion and agriculture, and later at Arpex Capital VC fund, where he focused on e-commerce, SaaS, and fintech. Through these roles, he developed deep expertise in business development, innovation, strategy, operations, finance, M&A, and investments. He also co-built Singularity University Brazil from the ground up, alongside another educational institution that impacted thousands of leaders.

Luciano holds an undergraduate degree in business, completed postgraduate studies in biotechnology at MIT, and the Owner/President Management (OPM) program at Harvard Business School (HBS), in addition to executive programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Draper University, Babson College, UC Davis, etc.

He is EB-1 Green Card holder ("the Einstein visa") and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Unreasonable Fellow, Atlantic Council Fellow, and HBS OPM alumnus. Together with his team, their work has won the Global Change Award and the LVMH Innovation Award, and has been recognized by TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions and Biofuels Digest’s Next 50 Companies to Disrupt the World. Their work has been recognized by Harvard Business School multiple times, including podcasts, competitions, and a published HBS business case.

Beyond business, Luciano mentors entrepreneurs and low-income students, volunteers with nonprofit organizations, and is an avid traveler, former chess player, and extreme sports enthusiast.

His core values are Radical Candor, Accountability, and Integrity and he lives by:

“Hard work outpaces smart work every time.”

“Those who say they can and those who say they can’t are both usually right.”

“No matter what cards life gives you, you have to learn to make your own magic.”

“This too shall pass."