Brian Behlendorf

Brian Behlendorf is an independent advisor, consultant, investor, and board-level director to technology non- and for-profit organizations and governments. His long career started with launching the first web sites for Wired Magazine, Burning Man, and many early electronic music and major brand websites through his early consultancy firm called Organic Online. In the midst of that he co-founded the Apache HTTPD Project, which led to the formation of the Apache Software Foundation, where he served as president for its first three years and set the course for its continued success today, and was a founding board member of both the Open Source Initiative and the Mozilla Foundation. He then pioneered the concept of hosted software collaboration tools through his company CollabNet, which he led as CTO through to its acquisition.

After that he spent two years serving the Obama Administration in a range of roles focusing on open source technology and standards for information exchange, and then left to join the World Economic Forum in 2010 as its CTO. After three years there, Brian then joined the investment team at Mithril Capital Management, recommending growth-stage investments into companies focusing on nuclear fusion, robotic surgery, and early AI efforts. In 2016 he left to join the Linux Foundation to lead the Hyperledger project, an enterprise blockchain open source project consortium involving IBM, JP Morgan, and a long list of banks, tech firms, governments and startups. While still at the LF he shifted to found and lead the Open Source Security Foundation, a $40M effort to invest in improvements in the open source landscape and the software supply chain.

In 2024 Brian moved to independent advising and consulting, continuing to serve on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2013, advising the Filecoin Foundation, and in 2026 became a General Partner at SparkLabs AI Seed Fund.