Brendan Trexler Iribe (; born August 12, 1979) is an American

game programmer A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface ...

, entrepreneur and the original CEO and co-founder of Oculus VR, Inc. and

Scaleform Scaleform Corporation is a developer providing middleware for use in the video game industry. As a result of Autodesk's acquisition of the company in March 2011, Scaleform has become part of the Autodesk Gameware line of middleware. Products ...

. He is the

managing partner A partner in a law firm, accounting firm, consulting firm, or financial firm is a highly ranked position, traditionally indicating co-ownership of a partnership in which the partners were entitled to a share of the profits as "equity partners". The ...

at BIG Ventures, an early-stage

venture Venture may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music *The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 *"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes *''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR Games * ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade gam ...

fund.

Early life and education

Iribe was born and grew up in Maryland. He graduated from

Atholton High School Atholton High School is a high school in Columbia, Maryland, United States and is a part of the Howard County public school system. The school hosts an Army JROTC program. The school mascot is the Raider. History Atholton takes its name from a l ...

Howard County, Maryland Howard County is located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2010 census, the population was 287,085. As of the 2020 census its population rose to 328,200. Its county seat is Ellicott City. Howard County is included in the Baltimore-Colu ...

and then attended the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...

, majoring in Computer Science which is part of the

University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) at the University of Maryland, College Park, is home to ten academic departments and a dozen interdisciplinary research centers and institutes. CMNS is one of 13 schools and colleg ...

in College Park for two semesters before dropping out to work as a freelance programmer.

Career

He started his career as a game programmer and worked on the user interface of

Civilization IV ''Civilization IV'' (also known as ''Sid Meier's Civilization IV'') is a 4X turn-based strategy computer game and the fourth installment of the ''Civilization'' series, and designed by Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and his vid ...

. He was cofounder/CEO of

, a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

technology provider for PC games. After Scaleform was sold to

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered ...

he worked as product team lead at

Gaikai is an American company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network (as in Remote Play between the PlayStation ...

. In 2012, he got together with

Palmer Luckey Palmer Freeman Luckey (born September 19, 1992) is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality ...

to start a

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

campaign for the Oculus Rift VR Headset bringing in about $2.4 million. Iribe took the position of CEO at the newly founded

Oculus VR Reality Labs is a business of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon W ...

. In December 2016, he stepped down from the role of CEO and decided to lead its newly created PC VR group. As of October 2018, Brendan announced in a Facebook post he would be departing Oculus and its parent company Facebook, with no mentioned future plans. In December 2018, he invested in

Sketchfab Sketchfab is a 3D modeling platform website to publish, share, discover, buy and sell 3D, VR and AR content. It provides a viewer based on the WebGL and WebXR technologies that allows users to display 3D models on the web, to be viewed on a ...

, an online platform for 3D and VR content.

Philanthropy

In 2014 Iribe announced a $31 million dollar donation to his alma mater, University of Maryland, College Park. $30 million was for th
Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering
a new building which includes labs for virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The remaining $1 million was donated to establish a scholarship fund. Iribe's mother, Elizabeth Iribe, also gave $3 million to set up two

endowed chairs A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are o ...

in the school’s computer science department - the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair and the Paul Chrisman Iribe Chair (named after her brother).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Iribe, Brendan 1979 births American computer businesspeople American computer programmers Living people People from Maryland Atholton High School alumni Facebook employees Video game programmers American technology company founders American technology chief executives Virtual reality pioneers American racing drivers British GT Championship drivers International GT Open drivers FIA World Endurance Championship drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers Asian Le Mans Series drivers 24H Series drivers Le Mans Cup drivers WeatherTech SportsCar Championship drivers