William Jeffrey

William Jeffrey is the Founder and General Partner of Airstream Venture Partners, an early-stage investment firm based in San Francisco, California. Previously, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of SRI International from 2014 to 2021, and held the same executive titles at HRL Laboratories between 2008 and 2014. His extensive public sector experience includes serving as Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and holding senior national security roles within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Jeffrey, who earned a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard University and a physics degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was appointed Chairman of Diraq in 2022. He currently focuses on bridging laboratory innovation to commercial markets by writing $100,000 to $5 million checks for pre-seed and Series A deep technology startups.