Thomas Reardon

Early life Reardon is originally from New Hampshire, from an Irish-Catholic background. He is one of 18 siblings, eight of them adopted.

Early tech career While in North Carolina, Reardon co-founded a startup at age 19. He served as a program manager and architect for Internet Explorer through version 4. Notably, he delivered the first implementation of CSS in Internet Explorer 3 and came up with the idea of bundling Internet Explorer with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Reardon was one of the earliest advocates and influencers of HTML4, CSS, and XML, designing the first commercial implementations of these languages.

In 1998, Microsoft became embroiled in antitrust litigation, United States v. Microsoft Corp., as a result of the browser war with Netscape. Reardon expressed disillusionment with Microsoft after the Netscape ordeal, ultimately deciding to leave to start a wireless networking startup called Avogadro. At OpenWave, he worked on developing the first mobile web browser. In 2003, the MIT Technology Review named Reardon one of its Top 35 Innovators Under 35, an annually published list recognizing innovators for "accomplishments that are poised to have a dramatic impact on the world as we know it".

In 2012 Reardon gave the commencement address to the School of General Studies as part of Columbia University commencement. and on the board of visitors at the School of General Studies and the Zuckerman Institute.

CTRL-labs The flagship device of CTRL-labs has been called an "API for the brain"

In February 2019, CTRL-labs announced raising $28 million in a Series B financing round from Google Ventures, Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Lux Capital, Spark Capital, Matrix Partners, Breyer Capital, and Fuel Capital.

VentureBeat features a series of demos for CTRL-Labs' technology.

In November 2019, CTRL-labs was acquired by Facebook in a deal reportedly between $500 million and $1 billion. The team was integrated into Facebook's AR/VR research group.

In July 2025, the scientific research underlying the wrist-worn neural interface debuted in Nature (journal).

Publications