Brendan_Iribe

Brendan Iribe

Brendan Iribe

American game programmer and founder


Brendan Trexler Iribe (/ˈrb/; born August 12, 1979) is an American game programmer, entrepreneur and co-founder of Oculus VR, Inc. and Scaleform. He is the managing partner at BIG Ventures, an early-stage venture fund.

Quick Facts Born, Alma mater ...

Early life and education

Iribe was born and grew up in Maryland. He graduated from Atholton High School in Howard County, Maryland and then attended the University of Maryland, College Park,[1] majoring in Computer Science which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences in College Park for two semesters before dropping out to work as a freelance programmer.[2][3][4]

Career

He started his career as a game programmer and worked on the user interface of Civilization IV.[1] He was cofounder/CEO of Scaleform, a user interface technology provider for PC games.[1][5] After Scaleform was sold to Autodesk, he worked as product team lead at Gaikai.[6] In August 2012, he departed Gaikai and became the new CEO of Oculus VR after their Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift VR Headset raised $2.4 million.[7] In December 2016, he stepped down from the role of CEO and decided to lead its newly created PC VR group.[8] In October 2018, Brendan announced in a Facebook post he would be departing Oculus and its parent company Facebook, with no mention of future plans.[9] In December 2018, he invested in Sketchfab, an online platform for 3D and VR content.[10]

Philanthropy

In 2014 Iribe announced a $31 million dollar donation to his alma mater, University of Maryland, College Park.[11] $30 million was for the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, a new building which includes labs for virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence.[12] 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 in the school's computer science department - the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair and the Paul Chrisman Iribe Chair (named after her brother).[13]

Racing Record

Complete WeatherTech SportsCar Championship results

Since departing Oculus in 2018, Iribe has focused his time on racing exotic cars manufactured by companies like McLaren and Ferrari.[14][15]

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap)

More information Year, Team ...

Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results

More information Year, Team ...

References

  1. Anderson, Nick (September 11, 2014). "College dropout donates $31 million to University of Maryland after technology company sells for $2 billion". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  2. Constine, Josh (September 11, 2014). "Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe Donates $31M To Build VR Lab At His Alma Mater University Of Maryland". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  3. Bowie, Liz (September 11, 2014). "Howard County native gives $31 million to UM for computer science center". Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on March 7, 2018. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  4. Kessler, Sarah (September 22, 2014). "Why Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe Just Gave $31 Million To A New Computer Science Center". Fast Company. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  5. Beilison, Jerry (May 28, 2014). "Palmer Luckey and the Virtual Reality Resurrection". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  6. Michaels, Andrew (November 28, 2017). "Students at Howard County's Application and Research Lab test new virtual reality gear". Howard County Times. Archived from the original on June 21, 2018. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  7. Cohen, David (December 13, 2016). "Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe Steps Down; Will Lead PC VR Group". AdWeek. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  8. "So much has happened since the day we founded Oculus in July 2012". Facebook. October 22, 2018. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
  9. "College Receives $38M for New Computer Science Building, Scholarships, Endowed Professorships". College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. September 12, 2014. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2018.
  10. "UMD Receives $2.1M from the State of Maryland to Create Two Endowed Chairs". College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. September 10, 2015. Archived from the original on October 23, 2018. Retrieved October 23, 2018.
  11. "Brendan Iribe Results". motorsportstats.com. Retrieved January 24, 2024.

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Brendan_Iribe, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.