Iribe grew up in Maryland and attended Atholton High School in Howard County before enrolling at the University of Maryland, College Park to study Computer Science. He left after two semesters to work as a freelance programmer. His early career included work on the user interface of the video game Civilization IV. He co-founded Scaleform, a user interface technology provider for PC games, which was subsequently acquired by Autodesk. He then joined the cloud gaming platform Gaikai as product team lead.
In August 2012 Iribe became CEO of Oculus VR following the company's Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift VR headset, which raised $2.4 million. He stepped down from the CEO role in December 2016 to lead Oculus's newly created PC VR group. In October 2018 he announced his departure from Oculus and its parent company Facebook. In December 2018 he invested in Sketchfab, an online platform for 3D and VR content. In June 2023 he co-founded Sesame, a product and research team focused on AI glasses. He serves as managing partner at BIG Ventures, an early-stage venture fund.
In 2014 Iribe announced a $31 million donation to the University of Maryland, College Park. Of that sum, $30 million funded the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, a new building housing laboratories for virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics and artificial intelligence. The remaining $1 million established a scholarship fund. His mother, Elizabeth Iribe, separately donated $3 million to endow two chairs in the university's computer science department.
Following his departure from Oculus in 2018, Iribe committed significant effort to motorsport competition. He competes with Inception Racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, classified FIA Bronze as a gentleman driver.
Iribe's IMSA programme has run in the GTD class with McLaren 720S GT3 machinery from 2021 through 2023, before switching to Ferrari 296 GT3 from 2024. With the McLaren he scored a fifth-place finish at the 2022 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring, and finished second at both Watkins Glen (Six Hours) and Petit Le Mans in 2022. In 2023 he finished third at the 24 Hours of Daytona. He finished sixth in the 2023 GTD championship standings. Switching to Ferrari for 2024 he scored a podium at Indianapolis (Battle on the Bricks) and another at Petit Le Mans, finishing ninth in the championship. In 2025 he won at Indianapolis and finished second at Watkins Glen, ending the season tenth in the GTD standings.
He has also started the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times with Inception Racing: in 2021 in a Ferrari 488 GTE Evo in the GTE Am class, finishing 41st overall and 12th in class; in 2022 in a Porsche 911 RSR-19 with Team Project 1, retiring; and in 2024 in a McLaren 720S GT3 Evo in the LMGT3 class, completing 275 laps and finishing 40th overall and 13th in class.
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