Who Is Brendan Eich? The JavaScript Creator Behind Brave

Brendan Eich is the co-founder of Brave and the creator of JavaScript who saw its standard reach edition 17 in June 2026, though Ecma never published a 4th edition. Brave's about page named him Founder & CEO in late October 2026, and he co-founded the company with Brian Bondy in 2015.

Ecma's own list of those editions is lopsided. Five documents came out in the 14 years from June 1997 to June 2011, counting the corrective 5.1 edition. Then twelve arrived in twelve straight Junes, from 2015 to 2026. The 2026 edition's introduction still names Eich as the language's inventor at Netscape.

Brendan Eich at a Glance

Who Is Brendan Eich?

Brendan Eich is an engineer and executive whose name sits on a programming language and two browser makers. Brave's about page calls him and co-founder Brian Bondy "Internet pioneers" and credits Eich as the creator of JavaScript and a co-founder of Mozilla.

As a Brave browser founder, Eich built a company whose browser blocks invasive ads and trackers on every webpage by default. Its search engine, Brave Search, runs on its own independent index of the Web. Brave's about page also says Brave earns revenue through partnerships with companies building Web3, the decentralized internet, and with the apps it offers through its wallet and rewards products.

His career runs in a straight line from the browser that first carried JavaScript to the browser company he co-founded in 2015.

Brendan Eich's Career: From Netscape and Mozilla to Brave

Brendan Eich's headline credits span three organizations, and the first two overlapped.

JavaScript at Netscape

The introduction to ECMA-262's 2026 edition credits Eich by name. "The language was invented by Brendan Eich at Netscape and first appeared in that company's Navigator 2.0 browser," it says. The same paragraph names JavaScript from Netscape and JScript from Microsoft as the best-known technologies behind ECMAScript.

Standards work followed the browser. Development of the ECMAScript specification started in November 1996, and Ecma's General Assembly adopted the first edition in June 1997. ISO/IEC approved it as international standard ISO/IEC 16262 in April 1998.

Mozilla

Brave's about page lists Eich as a co-founder of Mozilla, and his own writing agrees. In a March 2014 post on his blog, "my co-founder and 15-year partner in Mozilla" is how he describes Mitchell Baker. Their work together dates back to what he calls "the tiny mozilla.org staff fragment embedded in Netscape."

He signed a January 2014 post on that blog as Mozilla's "CTO and SVP Engineering" together with a colleague. The March post carried the next step in a single line. "Our Board of Directors has appointed me CEO of Mozilla, with immediate effect," Eich wrote on 24 March 2014.

"Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO," a post on Mozilla's blog said on 3 April 2014.

Brave and BAT

Eich co-founded Brave in 2015 with Brian Bondy, who had worked at Khan Academy and Mozilla. Brave's timeline puts its first desktop beta in 2016 and its 1.0 launch in 2019. The desktop and Android browser is a Chromium fork, and the iOS version runs on Apple's WebKit. In late October 2026 the about page listed Eich as Founder & CEO. Bondy appeared beside him as Founder & CTO.

Brave launched its rewards token, Basic Attention Token (BAT), in 2017.

That year's raise appears on Brave's timeline as an initial coin offering (ICO), the token-sale model in which a project sells new coins to fund its build.

What Did Brendan Eich Invent?

Brendan Eich invented JavaScript, and the language's standard says it became "the programming language that is supported by essentially all web browsers" after its 3rd edition in 1999.

The standard carries another name. Ecma publishes the language as ECMAScript, and MDN's JavaScript reference says "the standards for JavaScript are the ECMAScript Language Specification (ECMA-262) and the ECMAScript Internationalization API specification (ECMA-402)."

JavaScript also turns up in crypto, and Phemex's academy lists it with Java and Python as the general-purpose blockchain programming languages in most active use.

If you're counting inventions, JavaScript is the one the standard puts his name on. Eich's other headline credits are companies he co-founded, Mozilla alongside Mitchell Baker and Brave with Brian Bondy.

How Many Editions Has JavaScript's Standard Had?

JavaScript's standard ECMA-262 reached its 17th edition in June 2026, but Ecma never published a 4th edition. Ecma's ECMA-262 page says the Edition 4 number "was reserved but not used," so as an Ecma International publication that edition doesn't exist.

That gives the standard 17 edition numbers and 16 numbered editions. Add the 5.1 edition of June 2011, which made minor corrections to the 5th, and Ecma's shelf holds 17 edition documents.

The early count overstates the early pace. The 2nd edition of 1998 aligned the text with the ISO version, and the introduction calls the changes from the first edition "editorial in nature."

Ecma published a new edition every June from 2015 to 2026, after a ten-year gap between the 3rd edition in December 1999 and the 5th in December 2009. The 2026 edition's introduction explains the missing number. Work on a fourth edition "was not completed and not published as the fourth edition of ECMAScript," it says. Some of that work went into the 6th edition, adopted in June 2015.

That 6th edition added modules, class declarations and promises among its major changes, and the introduction calls its completion "the culmination of a fifteen year effort."

The streak began a year before the policy did. The introduction calls ECMAScript 2016, the 7th edition, "the first ECMAScript edition released under Ecma TC39's new yearly release cadence."

Method: every edition and date listed on Ecma's ECMA-262 page, counted once by hand and once by script, with the page's Edition 4 note quoted.

Check: the 2026 edition calls itself "the seventeenth edition," and the TC39 committee's GitHub tags for ES2016 through ES2026 match editions 7 to 17.

How Do You Trade Crypto Futures on Phemex?

Two Phemex notices took Brave's token off two markets in August 2026, the BAT/USDT futures on 12 August and the BAT/USDT spot pair on 28 August. With that perpetual delisted, the steps below use a crypto perpetual that stays listed, such as BTC/USDT. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

1. Sign up for a Phemex account, deposit USDT and move it to your futures account.

2. Open the BTC/USDT perpetual and set leverage low enough that a sharp move against you doesn't close the position.

3. Place the order with a stop-loss attached, so the trade closes at a loss you chose before you entered.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Brendan Eich doing now?

Brave's about page listed Brendan Eich as Founder & CEO in late October 2026, eleven years after he and Brian Bondy started the company. Brave makes a browser that blocks ads and trackers by default, plus a search engine built on its own index.

Why did Brendan Eich make Brave?

"An Internet company on a mission to build a user-first Web" is how Brave's about page describes the company. It says Brave is fighting to build that Web "most of all for freedom online."

Did Brendan Eich create JavaScript?

Yes. The introduction to ECMA-262, the standard behind JavaScript, says the language "was invented by Brendan Eich at Netscape" and first appeared in Netscape's Navigator 2.0 browser. Work on that standard began in November 1996.

Who founded the Brave browser?

Brave names two co-founders, Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy, who started the company in 2015. Its about page calls Eich the creator of JavaScript and a Mozilla co-founder, and it lists Bondy as a Khan Academy and Mozilla alumnus.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.