Brian Retford

Brian Retford co-founded RISC Zero in 2021 and led the Seattle-based company as CEO, building a general purpose zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) that lets developers generate ZK proofs for code written in ordinary languages like Rust and C++. Under his leadership RISC Zero raised a $12 million seed round and a $40 million Series A led by Blockchain Capital, and shipped tools like Bonsai and Zeth, an open source prover for building zkEVM-style rollups on Ethereum. Before RISC Zero he co-founded Vertex.AI, an AI optimization and compilation startup that was acquired by Intel, where he went on to work as a software engineering manager, and earlier in his career he worked on pricing and metering systems at Google Cloud Platform.

8 talks by Brian Retford

• ZK HACK IV Finale - ZK Panel: What it’s really like working in ZK
• ZK Hack IV - Get Rusty with RISC Zero: Build your ZK Rust Application
• Episode 296 - Zeth, Bonsai and RISC Zero with Brian and Jeremy
• How to Run an ETH Validator On a Smart Watch
• ZK9: Future ZK Emerging Use Cases and Key Enablers – Brian Retford (RISC Zero)
• Using Zero Knowledge Cryptography to Build Different Applications with Brian Retford
• Episode 251: Exploring Risc0 with Brian Retford and Jeremy Bruestle
• ZK7: RISC Zero: Encoding Von-Neumann Architectures in Zero-Knowledge Proof Systems - Risc0