He started his career as a game programmer and worked on the user interface of Civilization IV.[1] He was cofounder/CEO of Scaleform, a user interface technology provider for PC games.[1][5] After Scaleform was sold to Autodesk, he worked as product team lead at Gaikai.[6] In August 2012, he departed Gaikai and became the new CEO of Oculus VR after their Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift VR Headset raised $2.4 million.[7] In December 2016, he stepped down from the role of CEO and decided to lead its newly created PC VR group.[8] In October 2018, Brendan announced in a Facebook post he would be departing Oculus and its parent company Facebook, with no mention of future plans.[9] In December 2018, he invested in Sketchfab, an online platform for 3D and VR content.[10]
Philanthropy
In 2014 Iribe announced a $31 million dollar donation to his alma mater, University of Maryland, College Park.[11]
$30 million was for the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, a new building which includes labs for virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence.[12] The remaining $1 million was donated to establish a scholarship fund. Iribe's mother, Elizabeth Iribe, also gave $3 million to set up two endowed chairs in the school's computer science department - the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair and the Paul Chrisman Iribe Chair (named after her brother).[13]
