Sergey Gorbunov

Sergey Gorbunov is Co-Founder of Axelar, Professor of Cryptography at the University of Waterloo, and former CEO of Interop Labs — the software development company that built and supported Axelar's core protocol. He co-founded Axelar and Interop Labs with Georgios Vlachos. Axelar is a blockchain interoperability network enabling cross-chain communication and asset transfers across multiple blockchain ecosystems using a decentralized validator set and its own Cosmos-based consensus layer.

In 2025, Circle announced an agreement to acquire the Interop Labs team and intellectual property. Whether this transaction has fully closed and Gorbunov's resulting formal role at Circle (if any) should be verified from Circle's own official announcements as of August 2026. Axelar Network, the Axelar Foundation, and the AXL token remain independent and community-governed entities; Circle's acquisition relates to Interop Labs the software company, not to the Axelar network or foundation. Common Prefix may have taken over certain development responsibilities, which should be consulted from current Axelar Foundation documentation.

Gorbunov holds a PhD in Computer Science and Cryptography from MIT. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science, where his research covers lattice-based cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, and threshold signatures. He contributed founding team cryptography work to Algorand before co-founding Axelar. His personal website is sergeyg.tech.