Dr Vlad
Trifa.

ENGINEER · BUILDER · FOUNDER

The physical and digital worlds are merging. I've spent twenty years building where they meet.

Cover of Building the City of Bits by Vlad Trifa, PhD

A builder's guide to Physical AI, we explore the future of cities how AI agents, connected infrastructure, and decentralized systems will run our cities. Packed with code examples and case studies in 9 cities.

READ IT HERE →

01 — ABOUT

I'm a engineer, entrepreneur, and investor working at the intersection of the Internet of Things, AI, and decentralized systems. I run ZIMT, a product design & strategy studio in Zürich, and I'm building the City of Bits, a community and field guide to physical AI, connected infrastructure, and smart cities.

Before, I was co-founder and Chief Product Officer of two companies EVRYTHNG (acquired by Digimarc) and Ambrosus, where we shipped enterprise platforms still used by Fortune 100 brands today and raised >$160M. I co-authored Building the Web of Things, which laid the groundwork for standardisation efforts in this field by the W3C and Mozilla.

Trained as a PhD researcher at ETH Zürich & MIT, with an MSc in Robotics & Machine Learning from EPFL, I (co-)authored 60+ articles & patents.

When not working, you'll most likely find me practicing and teaching Hung Gar Kung Fu (2. Dan), snowboarding on our beautiful Swiss mountains, or simply enjoying spicy street food with my family somewhere in the world.

02 — MY THESIS

For a century we built two separate worlds: one physical, one digital. They're collapsing into a single physical computing fabric: the City of Bits.

Three forces drive this merge, and each has been my life's work. Together they're rewriting how the world around us is built, owned, and run — and it's why I build, write, and invest at their intersection.

REAL WORLD — IOT & ROBOTICS

Sensors, machines, and robots give software a body. I co-created the Web of Things and co-founded EVRYTHNG to put billions of physical things online.

INTELLIGENCE — AI

Machine intelligence applied to the physical world — perception, autonomy, and agents that turn connected things into systems which act on their own.

TRUST — DECENTRALIZATION

Web3 technologies lets real-world networks & assets be owned and trusted by the people who use them, not just the platforms that run them.

03 — MEDIA

Crypto Beyond Hype: Food Tracing, DAOs & You — Nerding out with Viktor · Podcast2025 Building the Operating System for Smarter Businesses — Techsylvania · Talk2020 Decentralising the IoT for Smarter Cities — Token2049 · Talk2019 Building the Web of Things— Book2016

04 — CONTACT

I take on a small number of projects each year: a keynote, a strategy workshop, or an advisory role for a team solving hard problems.

If that's you, tell me what you're up to! I read everything and reply to what's a fit.

vlad@zimt.co