Dr Vlad
Trifa.

ENGINEER · BUILDER · FOUNDER

The physical and digital worlds are merging. I've spent twenty years building where they meet.

Portrait of Dr. Vlad Trifa
ZÜRICH · 2026
NEW BOOK · JANUARY 2027
Building the City of Bits
A builder's guide to Physical AI — how AI agents, connected infrastructure, and decentralized systems will run our cities. With working code and ten case-study cities.
READ CHAPTER ONE — FREE →
01 — ABOUT

I'm an engineer, entrepreneur, and investor working where the physical and digital worlds meet. I founded ZIMT, a product design & strategy studio, and I'm writing Building the City of Bits — a builder's guide to AI agents, connected infrastructure, and decentralized systems.

For twenty years I've built 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. I co-authored Building the Web of Things, which inspired Mozilla's WebThings and laid the basis for the W3C's standardization of the field.

PhD from ETH Zürich. MSc in Robotics & AI from EPFL. Angel investor in 20+ startups. Based in Zürich.

Off the clock you'll find me carving down a snowboard run or deep on a scuba dive — an incurable foodie and lifelong collector of books, records, and art. I'm also a second-dan Kung Fu practitioner and instructor.

02 — MY THESIS

For a century we built two separate worlds — one physical, one digital. They're collapsing into a single computing fabric: The City of Bits.

Three forces drive the merge, and each has been my life's work. Together they're rewriting how the world around us is built, owned, and run — and it's why I build, write, and invest at their intersection.

REAL WORLD — IOT & ROBOTICS
Sensors, machines, and robots give software a body. I co-created the Web of Things and co-founded EVRYTHNG to put billions of physical things online.
INTELLIGENCE — AI
Machine intelligence applied to the physical world — perception, autonomy, and agents that turn connected things into systems which act on their own.
TRUST — DECENTRALIZED INFRASTRUCTURE
Web3 technologies lets real-world networks be owned and trusted by the people who use them — not only the platforms that run them.
03 — CURRENT PROJECTS
City of BitsCITY-OF-BITS.COM ↗
The next decade of computing: how AI agents, connected infrastructure, and decentralized systems merge the physical and digital worlds.
ZIMTZIMT.co ↗
My product strategy & design studio, building at the intersection of AI, IoT, and decentralized systems.
Notes from the City of BitsSUBSTACK ↗
I write about smart cities, building with AI, and where computing goes next.
04 — JOURNEY
Chief Product & Technology Officer — Ambrosus2017–2020 Head of Swisscom Digital Lab — Swisscom2016–2017 Co-founder & CPO — EVRYTHNG (acquired by Digimarc)2011–2016 AI, Robotics & IoT Researcher — MIT · UCLA · SAP · ETH Zürich2004–2011
05 — MEDIA
Crypto Beyond Hype: Food Tracing, DAOs & You — Nerding out with Viktor · Podcast2025 Building the Operating System for Smarter Businesses — Techsylvania · Talk2020 AMB-NET & Hermes Masternodes — Parity Tech · Talk2019 Decentralising the IoT for Smarter Cities — Token2049 · Talk2019 Buildign the Web of Things— Book2016
06 — GET IN TOUCH
I take on a small number of projects each year — a keynote, a strategy workshop, or an 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.

vlad@zimt.co