will.i.am

William Adams grew up in the Estrada Courts public housing projects, a Latino neighborhood in East Los Angeles where almost no one spoke his native language. To keep him away from street gangs, his mother sent him by bus to study in the affluent west side of the city. There he discovered rap and drum machines.

In the early nineties he signed with Ruthless Records under Eazy-E, but the death of the N.W.A co-founder put his first record deal on hold. Refusing to give up, he formed Black Eyed Peas with his fellow dancers. It took them nearly a decade to find the commercial formula that would dominate the charts across much of the world.

The money came in waves.

Between 2003 and 2010, the band placed dozens of songs in TV commercials, sports theme songs and soundtracks. Adams quickly realized that audiovisual licensing paid better than touring in a van. So he began chasing Hollywood studio executives to get his foot in the door on film sets. Because those in the boardrooms knew full well that their melodies amplified the impact of any movie trailer.

The Mutant Who Challenged Hugh Jackman

In 2009, he made the leap to the big screen with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, directed by Gavin Hood. Adams agreed to play the mutant John Wraith on one non-negotiable condition: he didn't want to just memorize lines in front of a green screen. He insisted on having a say in the film's sound design. In the end, his character survived only a few minutes against Victor Creed's claws, but the paycheck from Fox opened the door to major animated productions.

Soon after, voice directors saw in his vocal range a hit with family audiences. In 2008 he voiced Moto Moto in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and in 2011 he played Pedro in Rio, a Blue Sky Studios production for which he also composed several songs. The movie grossed 484 million dollars at the box office and proved that his name could draw moviegoers into theaters.

And the film industry took the bait.

In 2014, he reprised his role in the sequel Rio 2. But Adams no longer had his mind on voice-over booths or press junkets with actors. The movie business seemed too slow compared to the speed of tech venture capital.

Expensive Gadgets and the Algorithm's Refuge

In 2014, Apple's purchase of Beats Electronics for 3,000 million dollars left him a fortune thanks to his stake as an early investor. With that money he founded i.am+, a consumer electronics company with which he aimed to take on the Silicon Valley giants.

He launched the Puls, a bulky, clunky smart bracelet that critics tore apart over a battery that barely lasted two hours on standby. He tried to salvage the flop by making luxury camera cases for iPhone that cost almost as much as the phone itself. Warehouse returns piled up for months.

Nobody bought the invention.

After the setback with hardware, he focused his resources on mobile apps and machine learning. In 2023, he launched FYI (Focus Your Ideas), a messaging platform with artificial intelligence tools for managing creative projects. In January 2024, he premiered a radio format on SiriusXM hosted alongside qd.pi, a synthetic voice programmed to debate without on-call writers. His corporate division burned through more than 117 million dollars in funding rounds before recording its first profitable quarter.