Richard Muirhead is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Fabric Ventures, an organization that backs the founders of the Open Economy, investing in Web3 builders, businesses, and digital assets since 2012. He is also a Member of the Council of the NEAR Foundation. ^[1]​^[2]​

Education

Muirhead attended the Westminster School in London where he studied Maths, Further Maths, Physics, and Russian from 1985 to 1990. In 1991, he was accepted into the University of Cambridge for an MA in Engineering and graduated in 1994. ^[2]​

Career

Richard Muirhead is a technology engineer, founder, and investor whose career spans several decades across software, network infrastructure, and decentralized systems. In 2002, he founded Tideway Systems and served as its chairman, overseeing the company’s growth to a substantial enterprise customer base prior to its acquisition. He was recognized as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum between 2008 and 2009.

Muirhead has held senior leadership, advisory, and board roles across a range of technology companies. From 2012 to 2016, he served as interim chief executive officer, advisor, and board member at Automic Software, which was later acquired by CA Technologies. He has also been a board member of companies including Outlyer, HeavenHR, Thimble, and Bitrise, and has acted as an advisor or director to organizations such as Ocean Protocol, Moralis, and Cronofy. In parallel, he has held an academic appointment as a part-time industrial professor at University College London.

In 2009, Muirhead founded Firestartr, where he acts as chairman and managing partner, focusing on supporting early-stage internet and software companies. He later co-founded Fabric Ventures in 2012, where he serves as co-founder and managing partner, investing in companies operating at the intersection of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and related technologies. ^{[2] [3] [4] [5]}

Fabric Ventures

Richard Muirhead founded Fabric Ventures in 2012 and he serves as the Chairman & Managing Partner at the company. Fabric Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in scalable decentralized networks. Fabric backs the founders of the Open Economy, investing in Web3 builders, businesses, and cryptocurrencies. ^[6]​

Fabric invested in Polkadot, Ocean Protocol, Orchid, Sorare, 1inch, The Graph, and NEAR. ^[6]​

SVRN

Richard Muirhead has served as a member of the Board of Directors of SVRN since December 2025. SVRN is a Nasdaq-listed commercialization entity within the NEAR ecosystem that focuses on developing infrastructure for artificial intelligence workloads, including cloud resources for model training and inference. The organization is built on NVIDIA-based infrastructure and operates using NEAR-related token economics, with an objective of supporting agent-driven commerce within the ecosystem.

NEAR Foundation

Muirhead was involved with the NEAR Foundation from September 2019 to December 2025, acting as a backer and serving on its governing council, including as chair of the compensation committee. The NEAR Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Zug, Switzerland, responsible for stewarding the NEAR blockchain ecosystem. As a member of the NEAR Foundation Council, which functions as an oversight body similar to a board of directors, he participated in governance and strategic decision-making, including during the network’s launch and subsequent scaling phase. ^{[2] [7]}​