Trevor Perrin is an applied cryptographer who co-created the Signal Protocol with Moxie Marlinspike - the encryption backbone now protecting conversations for over a billion people across Signal, WhatsApp, and beyond. He also designed the Noise Protocol Framework, a foundational cryptographic framework deployed in WireGuard, WhatsApp's client-server layer, and the Lightning Network. A 2017 Levchin Prize winner, Perrin works as an independent consultant on quantum readiness and cryptographic systems design.
Brian Acton is the co-founder of WhatsApp, which sold to Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, and the founder of Signal Foundation, where he champions privacy-focused communication. After walking away from $850 million in unvested Facebook stock over ethical disagreements about user privacy, he invested $50 million to build Signal, an encrypted messaging platform designed to put users first. A Stanford computer science graduate who was rejected by both Facebook and Twitter in 2009, Acton has given over $1 billion to charitable causes with his wife Tegan, focusing on low-income families, reproductive rights, and internet privacy.