- Company has been developing its own proprietary machine learning and personalization offering to complement and expand on top of its retail media platform and ad server offering instead of relying on third-party solutions
San Francisco, CA, 17 March 2025 – Topsort, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) and auction-based retail media infrastructure company, today announced further strategic expansion of its industry-leading technology team by adding Ricardo Zilleruelo who’s a former Google AI engineer from Vertex AI as its Principal Engineer. This move reinforces Topsort’s commitment to being a democratizer of Silicon Valley’s monetization tech and adtech that is AI-fueled into APIs and infrastructure products, a further investment by the company to enhance its team of AI experts.
As part of this expansion and its commitment to pioneering AI-driven advertising solutions, Topsort is developing its proprietary ad tech in-house, leveraging its own algorithmic personalization offering to move beyond reliance on traditional third-party solutions. This strategic shift reinforces Topsort’s position as an AI-first organization, ensuring its technology remains innovative and future-proof in a fast-evolving retail media space.
Leading this transformation is Ricardo Zilleruelo, a renowned AI engineer from Google, who was previously at Google Cloud AI Recommendations. He brings deep expertise in cutting-edge machine learning and personalization algorithms. Under his leadership, Topsort is set to match—and surpass—industry giants like Amazon Ads and Google Ads, delivering a next-generation adtech platform powered by AI.
Topsort was founded by three software engineers, distinguishing itself and its products from many competitors in the adtech industry whose leadership teams have marketing or retail backgrounds. Currently, 70% of its headcount is dedicated to product development and engineering, with many within its sales team even boasting engineering experience.
“Topsort’s mission has always been to democratize the modern marketplace monetization secrets of the walled gardens into friendly infrastructure products to close the gap between retailers and tech giants, said Regina Ye, CEO and Co-Founder of Topsort*. “AI is a big part of what we see retailers need to succeed in this new age of retail media war - we are excited to welcome Ricardo to the team and also to continue our expansion and innovation in the AI Machine Learning space. We’re continuing to devote significant resources to create the best AI-driven retail media infrastructure that is not only purpose-built for customers’ needs but also maximizes efficiency and ROI. Ricardo brings deep technical skills and AI expertise to Topsort and further bolsters our vision as an engineering-led adtech company, a key point of differentiation in the industry.”*
Ricardo is a senior software engineer and technical lead. Most recently at Google, he led a team developing cutting-edge AI and search and recommendation products. He has also held senior engineering roles at both Groupon and Lyft.
“Joining Topsort is a natural fit for me because it’s a company grounded in first-principles thinking, guided by a strong technical focus, and driven by AI at its core,” said Ricardo Zilleruelo. “I look forward to further strengthening Topsort’s position as a product-led leader in the retail media space.”