Est. 2007 · San Francisco → Jackson Hole

Hard problems.
Complex data.
Real products.

We ideate, design, build and run it for your ideas or ours. No handoffs. No shortcuts. Nearly two decades of work that scales.

See our work Get in touch →
Founded
2007 · San Francisco
Approach
Design + Build end-to-end
Longest partnership
10+ years · still active
Own products
We invest in our own too

Built by someone
who's done it
at scale.

Leafnode was founded by Brent Whitney, a technology entrepreneur and investor with a career built at the intersection of hard problems and products that reach people at scale. From originating fantasy sports on the internet at Paul Allen's Starwave, to leading the platform buildout that made E*Trade a defining online brokerage, to critical data systems at Boeing. Technology leadership across industries where the stakes were high and the margin for error was low.

A career that includes four successful exits, among them Starwave's acquisition by Disney/ABC, one of the defining internet acquisitions of the late 1990s. Founded in San Francisco in 2007. We've since traded the beauty of San Francisco for the grandeur of Jackson Hole. The work has always been global.

We take on a small number of problems and solve them completely. That's not a constraint — it's a standard.

Brent Whitney · LinkedIn
Track record
the boeing company
Led critical large-scale data systems in aerospace.
e*trade
Led the platform buildout that established E*Trade as a leading online financial brokerage.
healthshop.com co-founder
Venture-funded. One of the early consumer health platforms on the internet.
Exited
lesconcierges co-founder
Global concierge and loyalty platform serving enterprise clients worldwide.
Exited
feedster
President & VP Technology. Early search and RSS web, pre-social media era.
Exited
Currently active
Founded · Investing
global mobility
AI-driven immigration case management platform. Launching in Spain 2026, expanding globally.
CEO/CTO AI-native
Co-founded · Investing
catrak technologies
Security telematics. Connected vehicle data, real-time tracking, and automotive security systems.
Telematics

Every system
we build runs on
serious data.

Fleet telematics from the world's largest logistics networks. Breeding research pipelines spanning decades of scientific data. Immigration case records across multiple countries and languages. Automotive security event streams. The common thread isn't the industry. It's the complexity of the data and the stakes of getting it right. Now we're layering intelligence on top of systems that were already built to last.

18
Years building complex data systems
24/7
Uptime requirement across mission-critical infrastructure
10+
Years with our longest active client partnership
Billions.
Users reached across platforms built by our founder

01 · Selected work
AI Platform · Immigration Tech
AI-native
Global Mobility

An AI-driven immigration case management platform launching first in Spain for the 2026 Extraordinary Regularization program. Multilingual across Spanish, Arabic, and French. Intelligent Q&A, WhatsApp automation, and a full advisor workflow. Additional countries and industry partners to follow later this year.

Founded & funded AI-driven Multilingual
IoT · Telematics · Edge
Mission-critical
IoT Data Infrastructure

Data systems collecting from IoT and edge devices at global scale, including telematics infrastructure for the world's largest logistics fleets. Amazon and UPS. Engineered for 24/7 uptime, multi-layer redundancy, and enterprise-grade security. The kind of infrastructure where failure has no acceptable definition.

Amazon UPS Confidential
Hardware + Software · Telematics
Product
Automotive Security & Telematics

What began as an innovative anti-theft product combining hardware and software to detect, notify, and track a theft in real time. It has evolved into a broader telematics capability. Real-time vehicle data, event-driven architecture, and security systems built from the hardware up. Now extended through Catrak Technologies.

Hardware + Software Real-time Catrak Technologies
Bioinformatics · Data Pipeline · Research
10yr partnership
Integrated Breeding Platform

A decade-long partnership powering scientific plant breeding research across Africa and beyond. Built with Africa Rice, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A data and pipeline platform helping researchers address global food supply. One of the more meaningful problems software can touch.

Africa Rice Gates Foundation integratedbreeding.net

02 · Capabilities
01
Design + Build

We take ambiguous hard problems and shape them into real products. End-to-end ownership from concept through production. The team that designs is the team that ships.

02
Data at Scale

High-volume, high-stakes data systems. IoT and edge pipelines, telematics, real-time event streams, research data infrastructure. Nearly two decades of building systems where the data itself is the product.

03
Security by Design

We don't bolt security on. We design around the threat model from day one. We also offer standalone audit and consulting across the full compliance stack, from ISO and NIST to HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, and SOC 2.


04
From Data to Intelligence

We've always built systems that extract value from complexity: rules engines, algorithms, machine learning, now AI. The technology changes. The capability doesn't. Today that means LLMs, intelligent automation, and NLU woven into products already built to handle serious data.

05
Mission-Critical Infrastructure

24/7 uptime. Multi-layer redundancy. Cloud and network architecture built secure from the ground up. We've built for clients where failure has no acceptable definition. That standard carries into everything we take on.

06
Long-term Partnership

Our longest client relationship spans over a decade and is still active. We're not optimized for churn. The work compounds. So do the relationships.

Security is a
constraint, not
a feature.

We design around the threat model from the first architecture decision. Across IoT infrastructure, immigration data, automotive hardware, and cloud systems. Security is foundational, not retrofitted. We also offer standalone audit and consulting across the full compliance stack.

On AI threats
AI introduces attack surfaces most security practices haven't modeled yet. We have. It's an area we've stayed ahead of, and where most organizations are still catching up.
AI threat modeling
Emerging attack vectors, adversarial inputs, model security
Full-spectrum compliance
ISO 27001/27701 · PCI-DSS · HIPAA · GDPR · SOC 2 · NIST
IoT & edge device security
Fleet, automotive, and industrial edge environments
Cloud & network security
Architecture review, hardening, and ongoing posture management
Threat modeling & attack surface analysis
From first architecture decision through production

At the edge of every complex system, there's a leaf node.

A small, selective team. If you have a hard problem that needs to become a real product — we should talk.

sales@leafnode.io
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