Brendan Eich

He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Santa Clara University and later a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois.⁠[1]

After completing his master’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1985, he joined Silicon Graphics, Inc., working mainly on the Unix kernel and networking layers; in 1992 he moved to MicroUnity, a startup developing video media processors; and on April 3, 1995, he joined Netscape.⁠[2]

He recalled that Netscape recruited him with the promise of “doing Scheme” in the browser, but upper engineering management required that the language “look like Java”; in early-to-mid May 1995 he prototyped the language code-named “Mocha” and embedded it in Netscape Navigator 2.0, then in pre-alpha development.⁠[3]

The language had to be finished within 10 days for a crucial demo.⁠[4]

Initially named LiveScript, the language first shipped with the beta release of Netscape Navigator 2.0 in September 1995; on December 4, 1995, Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems announced JavaScript in a joint press release backed by 28 companies.⁠[5]

In 1998 he co-founded the mozilla.org project and served as its chief architect.⁠[1]

He joined the board of the Mozilla Foundation when it was formed in 2003, helped launch the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird email client in 2004, and became Mozilla’s chief technology officer (CTO) in 2005. He has five children.⁠[6]

On March 24, 2014, he was appointed CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, where he had been CTO and SVP of Engineering; a political contribution he made in 2008 to California’s Proposition 8 had become public in 2012.⁠[7]

The $1,000 donation drew controversy, and the dating site OkCupid was among those that asked for his removal.⁠[8]

The mobile developer Rarebit said it would stop porting its products to Firefox OS while he remained in charge; he then made a set of commitments on his blog, including equality in employment and keeping community inclusion policies, and expressed “sorrow at having caused pain.”⁠[9]

On April 3, 2014, he announced his resignation as CEO and his departure from Mozilla, saying, “Our mission is bigger than any one of us.”⁠[8]

Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker wrote that day, “We’re sorry. We must do better.”⁠[10]

Mozilla later stated that he was not fired and was not asked by the board to resign, and that the board had invited him to stay in another C-level role.⁠[7]

On his blog he said he would rest, travel with his family and consider how to solve the “network problem.”⁠[11]

In 2015 he co-founded Brave with Brian Bondy, formerly of Khan Academy and Mozilla, serving as founder and CEO; the company is headquartered in San Francisco and released its first desktop beta in 2016.⁠[12]

In August 2016 Brave Software raised a $4.5 million seed round from investors including Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry’s FF Angel, Pantera CapitalPantera CapitalPantera Capital is an investment management firm focused on digital assets and the blockchain industry, founded by Dan Morehead in 2003. Its investments span corporate equity, early-stage tokens and liquid digital assets, and it manages a bitcoin fund, venture funds and multi-strategy blockchain funds.Open the full entry, Foundation Capital and Digital Currency GroupDigital Currency GroupDigital Currency Group (DCG) is a crypto asset investment and holding company headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by Barry Silbert in 2015. It invests in blockchain startups with permanent capital and owns subsidiaries including the digital asset manager Grayscale. In 2022, its crypto lender Genesis suffered losses after major client Three Arrows Capital defaulted and filed for bankruptcy the following year, leaving DCG and Silbert facing a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General, an SEC penalty, and multiple civil suits.Open the full entry, bringing its total since November 2015 to $7 million; the browser planned to block ads and pay websites through Brave Ledger, a Bitcoin-based micropayments platform.⁠[13]

In 2017 Brave sold the Basic Attention Token (BAT), raising the equivalent of $35 million in about 30 seconds; only about 130 people were able to buy tokens, and five buyers got close to half of the supply.⁠[14]

In September 2017, in his blog post “The Render Token,” he described himself as an advisor to OTOY and RNDR.⁠[15]

On November 13, 2019, Brave released version 1.0 for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.⁠[16]

By the end of November 2019 Brave had 10.4 million monthly active users and 3.3 million daily active users.⁠[17]

On February 12, 2021, he appeared on episode 160 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing the origin of JavaScript, the browser wars, JavaScript standardization and its ecosystem, FirefoxFirefoxFirefox is an open-source web browser developed by Mozilla. It began as Phoenix in 2002 and released version 1.0 in 2004.Open the full entry, Mozilla, Brave and the Basic Attention Token.⁠[18]

In June 2021 Brave launched a public beta of its search engine, Brave Search, after acquiring the open search engine Tailcat; he called it “the industry’s most private search engine.”⁠[19]

In April 2023 Brave Search removed its Bing API calls, which had supplied about 7% of results, so that all web results came from its own index; it was then averaging about 22 million queries per day.⁠[20]

Brave surpassed 100 million monthly active users in 2025; as of October 2026 its About page cites more than 120 million monthly active browser users and more than 80 million Brave Search queries per day, with him still serving as founder and CEO.⁠[12]

Personal website: Public link: https://brendaneich.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

X: Public account: https://x.com/BrendanEich (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

Brave Software: Official website: https://brave.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

Mozilla: Official website: https://www.mozilla.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]