David Alan Smith (born 1957, in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina) is an American computer scientist, entrepreneur, and CTO of the Croquet Corporation.
Smith then moved to the Thomas Lord Research Center in 1986 as a staff scientist working on intelligent object manipulation using robotic tactile sensors, pneumo-elastic and mechanical hands.
Smith has been nominated by the Lockheed Martin to be one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty Speakers who will speak about his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010.
Smith was one of six principal architects of the Croquet Project (along with Alan Kay, Julian Lombardi, Andreas Raab, David P. Reed, and Mark P. McCahill).
In 2020, the company raised a seed round,[3] branding its main product, Croquet OS, as "the Operating System for the Open Metaverse".