Richard Saul Wurman, TED cofounder, named in DOJ Epstein emails

Richard Saul Wurman, the architect who cofounded the TED conference series, appears in over 1,200 emails from Jeffrey Epstein's cache released by the U.S. Department of Justice on January 30. The emails, dating from at least 2011 to 2017, show Wurman and Epstein discussing a Memorandum of Understanding for a conference in September 2012, with Epstein agreeing to write a $100,000 check to finance the initial WWW Conference in Red Bank, California. An invoice dated August 6, 2012, payable to Wurman, Inc., was found in the files, though it is unconfirmed if the check was sent or cashed. Wurman's correspondence includes arranging visits to Epstein's island, Little Saint James, and invitations to TED parties. A TED spokesperson stated Epstein was not welcome at TED after 2008, but satellite events occurred outside official programming. Wurman, born in 1935, studied architecture under Louis Kahn, cofounded Murphy Levy Wurman in 1963, coined "information architecture," and sold TED in 2001 for $14 million. He turned 90 in 2025 and celebrated with a Miami Beach conference in January 2026. The DOJ material has not been authenticated by another source, and AN reports the correspondence as supplied.