# Nat Friedman

> Nat Friedman is a serial founder, investor, and tech executive best known for co-founding Xamarin and serving as CEO of GitHub, where he launched Copilot. After leaving GitHub in 2021, he co-founded NFDG, a $1.1B AI venture fund with Daniel Gross, launched the Vesuvius Challenge to decode ancient scrolls using machine learning, and joined Meta's Superintelligence Labs as VP of Product and Applied Research in 2025.

- **Role:** VP of Product and Applied Research at Meta Superintelligence Labs
- **Organizations:** Meta Superintelligence Labs, NFDG, AI Grant, Arc Institute (Board), Midjourney (Advisor), California YIMBY
- **From:** Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Secondary School, St. Anne's-Belfield School, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Ximian and GNOME Foundation, shaping early Linux desktop ecosystem, Co-founded Xamarin, pioneering cross-platform mobile development with C#; sold to Microsoft for ~$400-500M, Served as GitHub CEO (2018-2021), growing platform from 28M to 73M developers

## Career timeline

- **1996** — As MIT freshman, created LinuxNet IRC network; met Miguel de Icaza
- **1999** — Co-founded Ximian (initially International GNOME Support) with Miguel de Icaza
- **2001** — Company renamed to Ximian; Friedman transitions from CEO to VP Product Management
- **2003** — Ximian acquired by Novell; Friedman becomes Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source
- **2005** — Launched Hula Project at Novell; led migration of 6,000 Novell employees to SUSE Linux
- **2010** — Left Novell; traveled 20 countries; hosted Hacker Medley podcast
- **2011** — Co-founded Xamarin with Miguel de Icaza as CEO
- **2016** — Xamarin acquired by Microsoft for ~$400-500M; Friedman becomes Microsoft Corporate VP
- **2017** — Co-founded California YIMBY housing advocacy organization
- **2018** — Named incoming CEO of GitHub following Microsoft's $7.5B acquisition; assumed role October 29
- **2019** — Acquired npm, Semmle, Dependabot; launched GitHub Sponsors and GitHub CLI
- **2020** — Launched GitHub Actions broadly; began reading about Herculaneum papyri
- **2021** — Launched GitHub Copilot with OpenAI; stepped down as GitHub CEO in November
- **2022** — Began investing heavily in AI startups with Daniel Gross; nat.dev LLM playground
- **2023** — Launched Vesuvius Challenge; NFDG formalized as $1.1B AI fund; turned down OpenAI interim CEO role
- **2024** — TIME100 AI honoree; joined Arc Institute Board of Directors; NFDG achieved ~4x returns
- **2025** — Joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as VP of Product and Applied Research; Meta acquired partial stake in NFDG

## Achievements

- Co-founded Ximian and GNOME Foundation, shaping early Linux desktop ecosystem
- Co-founded Xamarin, pioneering cross-platform mobile development with C#; sold to Microsoft for ~$400-500M
- Served as GitHub CEO (2018-2021), growing platform from 28M to 73M developers
- Launched GitHub Copilot, the first AI pair programmer at scale
- Launched GitHub Actions (3B+ monthly minutes by 2025), Codespaces, Sponsors, CLI, and Mobile
- Co-founded NFDG, a $1.1B AI venture fund achieving ~4x returns
- Created nat.dev, the most popular LLM comparison playground in early 2023
- Launched Vesuvius Challenge, using ML to decode 2,000-year-old carbonized scrolls; awarded $1.7M in prizes
- Named to TIME100 AI list in both 2024 and 2025
- Joined Meta Superintelligence Labs in 2025 to help build AGI

## Latest updates

- **2025-06** — Joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as VP of Product and Applied Research alongside Alexandr Wang
- **2025-06** — Meta acquired partial stake in NFDG; fund achieved ~4x returns on ~$550M deployed
- **2026-04** — Meta Superintelligence Labs released first model, Muse Spark, powering Meta AI assistant
- **2024-09** — Named to TIME100 AI 2024 list for Vesuvius Challenge work
- **2024-03** — Joined Arc Institute Board of Directors alongside Reid Hoffman and Susan Li

## Links

- Website: https://nat.org
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/natfriedman
- GitHub: https://github.com/nat

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/nat-friedman
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-25