# Alexander Belokrylov

> Alexander Belokrylov is co-founder and CEO of BellSoft, the San Jose company behind Liberica JDK and Alpaquita Linux. After nearly thirteen years inside Sun Microsystems and Oracle - shipping Java ME Embedded, evangelizing Java SE, running pieces of Oracle's IoT Cloud - he left in 2017 with a group of OpenJDK engineers and started building a downstream Java distribution that now runs on millions of servers and ships inside Spring's own quickstart.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at BellSoft
- **Organizations:** BellSoft, Oracle (former), Sun Microsystems (former), JUG.ru (co-founder)
- **Education:** Radio Physics Engineering, Southern Federal University (former Rostov State University)
- **Known for:** Co-founded BellSoft, a top-five OpenJDK contributor by commit volume, Shipped Liberica JDK, the runtime endorsed by Spring, Built Alpaquita Linux, a Java-optimized OS now used independently for cloud workloads

## Career timeline

- **2005** — Joined Sun Microsystems as Academic Developer / Program Manager (EMEA)
- **2010** — Continued at Oracle after the Sun acquisition, Java evangelism and product management
- **2010s** — Co-founded JUG.ru, the Russian-speaking Java User Group
- **2014-2017** — Principal Product Manager at Oracle - Java ME Embedded, Oracle IoT Cloud Service
- **2017** — Left Oracle, co-founded BellSoft with fellow OpenJDK engineers
- **2018** — Liberica JDK becomes the recommended JDK for Spring Boot
- **2021** — Launched Alpaquita Linux, a Java-optimized Alpine-style distribution
- **2023** — Appeared on JFrog's DevOps Speakeasy at Devnexus
- **2025** — Liberica JDK Performance Edition upgraded with JVM 21 backend; BellSoft Hardened Images launched

## Achievements

- Co-founded BellSoft, a top-five OpenJDK contributor by commit volume
- Shipped Liberica JDK, the runtime endorsed by Spring
- Built Alpaquita Linux, a Java-optimized OS now used independently for cloud workloads
- Co-founded JUG.ru while at Oracle
- Member of the JCP Executive Committee community (BellSoft)
- Grew BellSoft to ~70+ employees with 100% reported customer retention in 2025

## Latest updates

- **2025-07** — Announced JVM 21 backend for Liberica JDK Performance Edition, delivering 5-10% (sometimes 40%) gains on legacy Java 8/11 workloads with no code changes.
- **2025-12** — Published BellSoft 2025 recap: Liberica downloads up 55%, Alpaquita downloads doubled, Liberica runtime container pulls 4x year-over-year.

## Links

- Website: https://bell-sw.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderbelokrylov/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/gigabel
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexander.belokrylov.5

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/alexander-belokrylov
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-15