# Ravi Pappu

> Ravi Pappu is the founder and CEO of Apeiron Labs, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup building low-cost autonomous robots that drift through the water column to measure the ocean at a scale never attempted. A physicist-turned-serial-founder, he invented Physical Unclonable Functions during his MIT PhD, co-founded the RFID pioneer ThingMagic (acquired by Trimble), and served as CTO of the CIA-linked venture firm In-Q-Tel before deciding the subsurface ocean was the hardest, most under-measured place on Earth and going after it with hardware he calls 'the CubeSat for the ocean.'

- **Role:** Founder & CEO at Apeiron Labs
- **Organizations:** Apeiron Labs, In-Q-Tel, IQT Emerge, Trimble Navigation, ThingMagic, MIT Media Lab
- **From:** India
- **Nationality:** Indian-American
- **Education:** PhD, Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Media Lab), MS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MSEE, Villanova University, B.Tech, Electrical Engineering, Osmania University, India
- **Known for:** Invented Physical One-Way Functions, now known as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), foundational to modern hardware security, Authored the 2002 Science paper on optical PUFs derived from laser speckle in disordered media, Co-founded ThingMagic, an RFID reader pioneer acquired by Trimble in 2010

## Career timeline

- **2001** — Completes MIT PhD; dissertation on Physical One-Way Functions, advised by Steve Benton and Neil Gershenfeld
- **2002** — Publishes seminal Science paper introducing optical Physical Unclonable Functions
- **2000s** — Co-founds ThingMagic, an RFID/IoT startup, with MIT classmates
- **2010** — ThingMagic acquired by Trimble Navigation; becomes platform architect at Trimble
- **2010s** — Joins In-Q-Tel; serves as SVP and CTO and co-founds IQT Emerge
- **2022** — Founds Apeiron Labs in Cambridge, MA; becomes CEO (July 2022)
- **2026** — Closes $9.5M Series A to scale low-cost autonomous ocean sensors

## Achievements

- Invented Physical One-Way Functions, now known as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), foundational to modern hardware security
- Authored the 2002 Science paper on optical PUFs derived from laser speckle in disordered media
- Co-founded ThingMagic, an RFID reader pioneer acquired by Trimble in 2010
- MIT Technology Review TR35 honoree (2003)
- Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40 (2008)
- Carl T. Humphrey Memorial Award, Villanova University (2004)
- Raised $9.5M Series A for Apeiron Labs (2026), reducing the cost of ocean data roughly 100-fold

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Apeiron Labs closed a $9.5M Series A led by Dyne Ventures, RA Capital Planetary Health and S2G Investments, with Assembly Ventures, Bay Bridge Ventures and TFX Capital participating.
- **2026-05** — Featured by MIT News for mapping the ocean with autonomous sensors.

## Links

- Website: https://ravipappu.netlify.app/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravipappu/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ravi-pappu
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-03