Cryspen was founded in December 2021 by Franziskus Kiefer, Karthikeyan Bhargavan, and Jonathan Protzenko, with the goal of adapting and extending cutting-edge formal verification tools developed at research labs like Inria and applying them to commercial software development. All three co-founders have a demonstrated track record of solving challenging problems in high-assurance high-performance cryptographic software development, both in research and industry.

Franziskus, our CEO, has a background in analyzing and proving cryptographic protocols academically as well as implementing and maintaining cryptography software. Karthik, our chief research scientist, is an expert in formal verification, protocol analysis, and applied cryptography. Jonathan, scientific advisor, is experienced in designing languages, verification software and toolchains for formal methods.