Dr. Vlad Trifa is an engineer, entrepreneur, and investor working where the physical and digital worlds meet. He's the founder of ZIMT, a product design & strategy studio, and is writing Building the City of Bits — a builder's guide to AI agents, connected infrastructure, and decentralized systems, published as City of Bits.
He spent the last 20 years building at that edge: first as an AI and robotics researcher, then as co-founder and CPO of two companies, EVRYTHNG (sold to Digimarc) and Ambrosus, shipping enterprise platforms used by Fortune 100 brands and raising $160M. He co-authored Building the Web of Things, which inspired Mozilla's WebThings platform and laid the basis for W3C's standardization of the field.
PhD @ ETH Zurich. MSc, Robotics & AI, EPFL. Angel investor in 20+ startups. Based in Zurich.
Current Projects
My journey
Selected media
- (Podcast) Crypto Beyond Hype: Food Tracing, DAOs, and You — Nerding out with Viktor2025
- (Conf Talk) How to Build the Operating System for Smarter Businesses — Technsylvania2020
- (Tech talk) AMB-NET and functionality of Hermes Masternodes — Tech Talk at Parity Tech2019
- (Conf talk) Decentralising the IOT for Smarter Cities and Businesses — Token20492019
Get in touch
I take on a small number of projects each year — a keynote, a strategy workshop, or advisory role for a team solving hard problems. If that's you, tell me what you're up to. I read everything and reply to what's a fit.