Meet Grigore Roșu, Founder & CEO of Pi Squared: The Team Building Web3 Infrastructure Beyond Blockchain

Tell us about Pi Squared

Thanks for having me. Right now I wear two hats, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, and Founder & CEO of Pi Squared. I actually like the balance because research and company-building push each other forward in ways you don’t always expect. At Pi Squared, we’re addressing one of blockchain’s biggest weaknesses, which is fragmented systems that can’t really trust or talk to each other. Our focus is on enabling verifiable, high-speed cross-chain computation and settlement without relying on bridges, centralized players, or black-box logic. In short, we’re building the trust layer that lets Web3 scale and interoperate like it should.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

It really goes back to my academic work on the K framework. It’s a way to formally define languages like C++, Solidity, or JavaScript using mathematical logic. That work naturally led me to think about verification, fragmentation, and trust in blockchain. The same ideas that help us prove properties in programming can help us prove transactions, computations, and claims across different blockchains. Pi Squared is essentially the real-world application of that vision.

Tell us about your core product or service: FastSet

FastSet itself represents a fundamental departure from blockchain architecture. Rather than relying on bridges, centralized intermediaries, or opaque logic, FastSet enables applications, agents and protocols to interact seamlessly across ecosystems, while remaining verifiable by design. Transactions are independently provable, removing the need for trust assumptions. Far more than another blockchain, FastSet is the next-gen verifiable settlement protocol purpose-built for digital assets and AI at scale. Distributed and actor-based, FastSet is built to eliminate the fragmentation, latency, and trust bottlenecks plaguing today’s Web3 infrastructure.

With throughput exceeding 100,000 transactions per second and finality under 100 milliseconds, FastSet unlocks real-time applications at scale for sectors like finance, gaming, and AI. Developers are free to build in the languages they already know, including Python, Rust, JavaScript, and C++, without being locked into a single ecosystem. Unlike blockchain’s rigid requirement of total ordering and block creation, FastSet processes independent claims in parallel, providing near-unlimited scalability.

What most excites you about the blockchain industry?

I’m excited by the possibility of opening Web3 up to all developers, not just those willing to learn a niche language or framework. By enabling any programming language to be translated into a verifiable format, we lower the barrier for the best Web2 engineers to contribute. On a bigger picture level, I think blockchain is on the verge of a shift. I don’t believe the future is about piling on L2s or clunky architectures. If we implement verifiable settlement properly, we can simplify the stack and unlock speed and trust in a way that makes blockchains truly usable.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?

Probably pushing back against accepted “truths” in the industry, like the idea that L2s and/or zero-knowledge proofs are the only paths to scale. I’ve taken a more contrarian stance: with the right architecture separating consensus, execution, and verifiability, you don’t need extra layers. Convincing others of that, while also building the tech to prove it, has been both the biggest challenge and the most rewarding part of this journey.

What is your number one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

I would say don’t just follow the hype cycle. It’s tempting to chase what everyone else is building, but the real breakthroughs come from questioning assumptions, even if that makes you unpopular at first. If you’re genuinely solving a problem that others are brushing aside, you’re probably on to something meaningful. And don’t underestimate education, because it is the only way to grow risk-free and have a truly rewarding life: educate yourself, educate others.

What can we hope to see from Pi Squared in the future?

We have some pretty ambitious plans to set the benchmark for fully decentralized and ultra-fast payment systems and verifiable settlement across both AI and crypto. We’re lining up some major partnerships that we’ll be announcing soon, and we’re steadily knocking down our roadmap milestones. The broader vision is to make verifiable, interoperable infrastructure the new standard for Web3 and beyond.