Tech Journalism Pioneer
Pioneering Tech Journalist Om Malik, GigaOm Founder and Venture Capitalist, Dies at 60
Anonymous
Key Points
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Om Malik was born in India and educated in the UK, and he helped usher legacy media brands online early on, including being a founding member of Forbes.com in 1997.
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Malik founded GigaOm in 2001, grew it into a defining tech outlet, stepped away from day-to-day operations in 2014, and after financial troubles the assets were bought and relaunched by Knowingly in a new form.
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Malik was True Ventures’ first founder backer and was later named partner emeritus in 2022, a trajectory repeatedly highlighted in tributes from the tech community.
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Malik publicly documented his heart-attack at 41 and Type 2 diabetes in a 2024 essay, detailing the lifestyle changes that followed—quitting smoking, eliminating red meat, exercising regularly, and adopting healthier eating.
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Industry tributes after his death highlighted his intellect, humanity, and willingness to push for truth, with Apple’s Greg Joswiak calling him incredibly talented and thoughtful, and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff lauding him as a pioneer and deep thinker.
Om Malik, the founder of GigaOm and a pioneering voice in tech journalism, died on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital. He was 60. The cause was complications from a cardiac event, ending a career that stretched from the early days of the web to the age of artificial intelligence. Tech Startups reported his death after a long heart illness.
Tributes poured in from across Silicon Valley. Apple's Greg Joswiak called him "incredibly talented and thoughtful." Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff praised him as a "pioneer and deep thinker" who pushed the industry to be better and more humane. Inc. described Malik as one of the most prominent figures in both tech media and venture capital.
From New Delhi to Forbes.com to GigaOm
Malik was born in New Delhi in 1966. He was educated in India and the UK before moving to New York City in 1993 to pursue journalism. In 1997, he became a founding member of Forbes.com, helping one of America's oldest business magazines find its footing online. That early work put him at the center of the internet's first wave.
In 2001, Malik launched GigaOm as a personal blog. It grew into one of the web's most respected tech outlets, raising $22.3 million in venture capital before financial trouble shut it down in March 2015. The brand's assets were later bought and relaunched by a company called Knowingly. GigaOm's current leadership called Malik the "architect of tech analysis."
A Journalist Who Crossed Over Into Venture Capital
In 2014, Malik stepped away from GigaOm's day-to-day work to join True Ventures as a partner. He was the firm's first founder backer — a journalist turned investor who brought a storyteller's eye to early-stage companies. True Ventures' founders said his move "bridged the gap between storytelling and company building." In 2022, he was named Partner Emeritus, a senior advisory role.
The transition drew some criticism. A few independent tech critics argued that moving from reporter to investor blurred important lines. But Malik largely sidestepped the conflict by shifting his writing toward big-picture topics — aesthetics, philosophy, and the human side of connectivity — rather than breaking news about companies he might have a stake in.
A Heart Attack at 41 Became a Public Health Warning
In 2008, at age 41, Malik suffered a major heart attack. He did not keep it private. In January 2024, he published a long essay on Om.co detailing his decade-long struggle with Type 2 diabetes and the changes he made to survive: quitting smoking, cutting out red meat, exercising regularly, and overhauling his diet. The essay went viral among tech workers who saw themselves in his story.
That openness made him a different kind of role model. To many of his more than one million combined social media and newsletter followers, the 2024 health essay mattered more than any scoop he ever broke. TechCrunch noted that his willingness to be vulnerable about physical health was seen as his "greatest act of mentorship" by the developer community.
The End of a Voice That Kept Silicon Valley Honest
Malik leaves behind a media landscape he helped shape. He was part of a small group — alongside Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — who proved that individual voices online could rival the reach of major publications. His GigaOm experiment showed that a blog could become a real business. His later writing proved that a solo brand could stay relevant for decades.
The New York Times analyst Shira Ovide wrote that Malik was "the rare voice who could get a CEO on the phone" but would use the call to discuss the ethics of AI or the quality of a Leica camera lens rather than quarterly earnings. TechCrunch called his death the end of the "Golden Age of Blogging," when individual voices carried more weight than corporate brand names.
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