The Internet Computer blockchain was developed by the [DFINITY Foundation](https://dfinity.org), headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, which runs R&D centers in Switzerland and California, and remote teams worldwide. By mid-2022, DFINITY employed almost 300 people, primarily in R&D. The team includes many famous cryptographers, computer science researchers and engineers.
The DFINITY Foundation was founded in Switzerland in October 2016 to organize development of the Internet Computer blockchain. The name DFINITY is a shortening of “decentralized infinity,” and dates from early 2015. It was first used by project founder, Dominic Williams, to refer to his theoretical crypto work, which he hoped would make a World Computer possible.
In February 2017, the DFINITY Foundation ran an early public ICO to raise funds to scale out. This was then supplemented by private fundraising rounds in 2018, which raised money from more than 100 hedge funds and VCs, including well-known names such as Andreessen Horowitz, before the advent of a16z crypto.