Michael Birnbach

Michael Birnbach

Chief Financial Officer

As the Chief Financial Officer, Michael leads the XPRIZE Foundation’s financial planning, strategy, and accounting.

Prior to this role, Michael was part of the Executive team at Factual as SVP of Finance & Operations and Treasurer for 10 years, successfully helping to grow the company from 25 people to over 200 people, expanding operations globally, and successfully merging the company with Foursquare. Before joining Factual, Michael analyzed and advised private equity groups on national real estate portfolio acquisitions and distributions. He also conducted private wealth management for individuals and Fortune 500 companies while at Oppenheimer and Smith Barney/Citigroup. Before that, Michael honed his deal-making skills in the entertainment industry on both the agency side at ICM and then on the production side at Warner Brothers and MGM. On the non-profit side, Michael has spent over 11 years managing finance and operations for the CommonCrawl Foundation, helping to democratize access to web information by producing and maintaining an open repository of web crawl data that is universally accessible and analyzable.

Michael earned his BS degree in Economics from Chapman University. He is an active participant in industry trade groups, such as The CFO Leadership Council and the Los Angeles CFO Roundtable. Michael resides in Los Angeles with his wife and son. Outside of work, Michael plays tennis and enjoys reading biographies, dabbling in real estate and design, and watching movies and F1.