Professional Role and Expertise
Mrinal Wadhwa serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Head of Product at Ockam, a company specializing in secure, scalable, and interoperable platform-as-a-service solutions for distributed agentic AI systems. He co-founded Ockam and has been with the company since at least June 2018, leading the development of open-source tools designed to enhance security, privacy, and trust in distributed systems, especially in Internet of Things (IoT) environments.
Mrinal’s technical expertise centers on distributed systems, applied cryptography, and secure messaging, with a strong focus on building scalable infrastructure that handles security at scale. He is proficient in programming languages including Rust and Elixir, and actively contributes to open-source projects that enable developers to easily implement end-to-end encryption, mutual authentication, and authorization policies.
Contributions and Technical Leadership
Under Mrinal’s leadership, Ockam delivers a comprehensive stack for AI-native applications encompassing:
- Build: A developer-friendly SDK and open-source Python library that supports agents capable of planning, reasoning, and tool invocation, utilizing any large language model (LLM) or reasoning model.
- Run: A serverless AI runtime that executes intelligent agents with secure, private access to models and external services.
- Connect: A proprietary messaging protocol enabling millions of agents to communicate securely with end-to-end encryption and mutual authentication, facilitating coordination across complex, multi-tenant environments.
- Secure: Ockam Trust framework that embeds integrity and trust at the core, offering non-human identities, attribute-based access control (ABAC), comprehensive auditability, and data governance.
- Scale: Infrastructure engineered to scale from prototypes on a laptop to planet-scale production, enabling rapid, reliable agent communication and orchestration without bottlenecks or code rewrites.
Mrinal is recognized for pioneering systems that make large vectors of security risk impossible, effectively replacing fragmented point solutions with a unified platform. His work focuses on security-by-design, providing robust trust models suitable for real-world complex architectures such as IoT systems deployed in cities and airports.
Industry Engagement and Thought Leadership
Mrinal is actively engaged in the cybersecurity and distributed system communities. He frequently participates in podcasts (e.g., The Secure Developer, Rustacean Station), public speaking events such as InfluxDays, and educational sessions where he shares his expertise on transforming secure communication models beyond traditional TLS protocols. He mentors technical teams and developers, often highlighting advanced security challenges and solutions in modern AI and IoT ecosystems.
His professional presence extends to platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub, and Hachyderm, where he shares insights and maintains contributions to open-source repositories aimed at enhancing software privacy and security.
Educational Background
Mrinal Wadhwa holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, completed between 2001 and 2005. His early career includes roles focused on large-scale data problem-solving and systems architecture, events that laid the foundation for his leadership in distributed systems and cybersecurity.
Summary Insight: Mrinal’s role as CTO at Ockam situates him at the intersection of cutting-edge distributed systems, cryptography, and AI agent orchestration. His deep technical acumen, combined with a clear vision for scalable and secure system architectures, positions him to prioritize solutions that reduce complexity while maintaining high trust and integrity. His leadership in developing open-source frameworks and secure communication protocols is central to Ockam's ability to deliver robust, scalable AI-native platform services that appeal to enterprises requiring advanced security and seamless agent scalability.
