Welcome to BBF,
An engineering & design studio.
We build for people solving hard technical and scientific problems.
ABOUT US
The Studio
Bread Board Foundry is an engineering and design studio that builds software, hardware, and educational experiences that relate to the physical world.
We work with hardware teams building in robotics, aerospace, and embedded systems, and with scientists and researchers working in environmental, ecological, and climate science. Some of what we build comes from their problems; some comes from our own. We chase ideas we believe are worth building before anyone's asked for them, ground them in published research, and usually release the results open source. We also teach what we know, through workshops and talks.
We're picky about who we work with. We want teams solving something genuinely hard, or working to protect something on this planet, and we get most excited when it's both. When we take on the work, we build it with you, hands on the prototype from day one.
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The Engineer & The Designer
Keenan Johnson
Engineering Partner
Keenan has spent his career chasing the hardest problem he could find. What started in space exploration turned into an obsession with climate change. He worked Mission Control at SpaceX for the first Falcon 9 ground landing and the first autonomous drone-ship landing; co-founded Impossible Aerospace and led the 25-person team that built the US-1, the world's longest-flying fully electric UAV, deployed by public safety agencies in live firefighting operations; founded and hired the software engineering team and set the technical roadmap for real-time sensor fusion and underwater robotics at Bedrock Ocean Exploration; built the mission control system for an undisclosed company's fusion reactor, streaming real-time data from thousands of telemetry channels; and founded Ribbit Network, now the world's largest crowdsourced network of open-source greenhouse gas sensors, featured by NASA Earthdata.
Susie Kim
Design Partner
Susie is a serial founder, operational architect, and multidisciplinary product designer who thrives in chaos. She applies behavioral science & research to catalyze meaningful impact, helping people process complex information and take intuitive action through the products and systems she puts into the world. She opened a coffee roastery franchise that crossed a million dollars in revenue; built Pluto Money, a Techstars and Barclays-backed fintech startup that helped 75,000+ students build financial literacy; pioneered visual journalism as a new digital media format for youth from marginalized communities to learn about social issues, break media echo chambers, and build careers in policy; and co-founded Ribbit Network with Keenan, leading its operations, designing its famous frog brand, and writing the educational curriculum that let citizen scientists build and run their own sensors.
WHAT WE’VE BUILT
See all of our workPretzelOptimize Your Hardware Manufacturing Today
Pretzel helps small hardware teams decide what to build and order today. Reduce stockouts, improve delivery times, and keep your production line moving without enterprise complexity.
SouffléGoal-Based Planning Tool for Hardware Leaders
Transform complex hardware projects into clear roadmaps with Soufflé's right-to-left planning methodology. Start with your goal and watch your plan take shape.
LOAFHyperlocal Forecasting for Off-Grid Research Sites
LOAF fuses regional forecast models with your own local sensor data for hyperlocal predictions standard 3km grids miss. Open source hardware, no vendor lock-in: build the sensor, train the model, run it yourself.
BloopA Cozy Sightsea-ing Quest
Pilot a little underwater ROV through the Puget Sound, photograph real sea creatures, and fill your catalog as you drift and explore. Free, in-browser, and still in beta, with mobile support on the way.
Awesome List for ScienceML Resources for Scientists, Not Engineers
A curated list of resources for marine biologists, climate researchers, and ecologists running ML experiments. Focused on accessible compute, reproducible workflows, and resources built for scientists, not scaling companies.
Hardtack(coming soon)
Simple Reliability Workflows for Hardware Teams
Hardtack replaces scattered emails and spreadsheets with one systematic reliability workflow for growing hardware manufacturers. Track every issue from first report to final resolution, without enterprise QMS cost or complexity.
LATEST FROM THE SLICE
Read the blog
Dec 1, 2025
What We're Learning About GPU Infrastructure for Visual Imaging ML in Research Settings
Research teams running visual imaging machine learning—whether analyzing kelp forest imagery, tracking wildlife populations, or processing satellite data—face a problem that's rema…
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Nov 19, 2025
The $3,000/Month You’re Spending on Project Plans That Don’t Work
The tools designed for planning either don’t exist in your price range or require enterprise implementations you can’t justify. So you’ve settled for tools designed for something e…
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Nov 12, 2025
What Micron's $100 Billion Delay Reveals About Hardware Planning
Micron's first New York chip fab just got its fourth delay. On November 7, 2025, the company published revised timelines showing the facility won't open until late 2030—a full eigh…
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