Great Entrepreneurs is pleased to announce The Top 50 Data Tech Entrepreneurs of 2025. In today’s economy, data tech has become essential to how businesses operate, make decisions, and innovate. It includes the tools and systems that enable organizations to collect, process, and analyze vast amounts of data in real time. As companies across every industry compete to unlock value from their data, the entrepreneurs leading the charge in this space are reshaping everything from supply chains and healthcare to financial services, retail, and beyond.
This year’s awardees are driving this transformation by developing AI-powered analytics platforms, real-time data streaming engines and solutions that enhance data quality, privacy, and governance. These founders and executives are creating technologies that power modern businesses. Their work is shaping how industries operate today—and how they’ll evolve tomorrow.
Among this year’s awardees, Curtis Liu, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Amplitude, is recognized for developing the core technology behind Amplitude’s product analytics platform, which helps companies understand user behavior to improve digital products. Peter Wang, Co-Founder and Chief AI and Innovation Officer of Anaconda, has helped shape Anaconda into a renowned data science platform, supporting over 45 million users across corporations, research institutions, and academia. Anil Chitkara, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Evolv Technology, is celebrated for advancing AI-powered physical security screening, enabling venues, transportation hubs, and public spaces to enhance safety through smarter, faster detection.
This year’s awardees were selected through a methodical process and careful consideration of each candidate's career track record and industry contributions. Please join us in celebrating The Top 50 Data Tech Entrepreneurs of 2025.
1. Daniela Amodei
President and Co-Founder, Anthropic
Daniela Amodei is the President and Co-Founder of Anthropic, an AI research organization dedicated to building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Its first product, Claude, is an AI assistant designed to handle tasks at any scale. The company's research interests span multiple areas, including natural language processing, human feedback, scaling laws, reinforcement learning, code generation, and interpretability. Anthropic, which private investors are valuing at an estimated $18 billion, has partnerships with Google's parent company Alphabet and Amazon.
Amodei co-founded Anthropic with her brother Dario Amodei, who serves as CEO, along with several former OpenAI researchers. Before Anthropic, Amodei spent nearly three years at OpenAI, where she held roles including Engineering Manager and Vice President.
Amodei has 14 years of experience and got her start in 2011 in business development at the IRIS Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, and later with Matt Cartwright for Congress. She also served as a founding recruiter at Stripe before shifting into AI research and policy. Amodei holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
2. Mayur Rustagi
CTO and Co-Founder, Sigmoid
Mayur Rustagi is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Sigmoid, a data engineering and AI consulting company that helps enterprises make data-driven decisions. Sigmoid works with some of the largest data producers across industries, including CPG, retail, banking, financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, and media, to solve complex business challenges. Backed by Peak XV Partners, the company has established a strong presence in the data and analytics space.
With 16 years of experience, Rustagi is a renowned leader in data engineering, big data, and analytics. He has worked enterprises to digitally transform themselves and built modern data architectures delivering millions of dollars in business value. An avid open-source enthusiast, Rustagi regularly contributes to the Apache and cloud ecosystems, such as the first deployment of Spark on GCP. Before joining Sigmoid, Rustagi was a developer at Adobe Systems.
Rustagi graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur with a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in computer science.
Mayur Rustagi's Insight
"Building Sigmoid has been a journey of curiosity, challenges, and constant learning. From a small team of data enthusiasts to a 1000+ member company solving complex data problems for Fortune 500 enterprises, every step has reinforced my belief in the power of data and AI. Engineering at scale isn’t just about technology—it’s about people, decisions, and impact. Entrepreneurship has taught me that resilience and adaptability matter just as much as innovation. The excitement lies in knowing that we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible with data, and the best is yet to come."
3. Curtis Liu
Co-Founder, CTO, Amplitude
Curtis Liu is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Amplitude, a product analytics company that helps organizations understand user behavior to build better digital products. As CTO, Liu developed the core of Amplitude’s technology.
Prior to Amplitude, Curtis worked as a software engineer at Google and Electronic Arts. He earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science and mathematics from MIT and is a 2x winner of Battlecode, MIT’s largest programming competition.
4. Tony Gentilcore
Founding Member & Product Engineering Lead, Glean
Tony Gentilcore is the Co-Founder and Product Engineering lead at Glean. For more than 20 years, he has loved to build products with fast and smooth user interfaces for devices of every size.
During a decade at Google, Gentilcore helped modernize the web search results page from the static “ten blue links” days into the JavaScript era. Later he founded and led the Chrome Speed Team where he and his team contributed to the HTML5 specification, helped form the W3C Web Performance Working Group and ensured Chrome established itself as the fastest browser.
Tony holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Saint Louis University.
5. Ali Ansari
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, micro1
Ali Ansari is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of micro1, an AI-powered recruiting platform that helps companies hire top global talent quickly. micro1 uses AI to source a high volume of job applicants, automatically vet those candidates via AI interviews, and match the top performers with recruitment teams based on the given job description. Its end-to-end AI Recruiter agent is used internally to build a talent pool of professionals that can be interviewed and hired with the click of a button, or by recruitment teams to significantly increase their output via process automation.
6. John Denero
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, LILT
John DeNero is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of LILT, where he leads the research division. He is also the Giancarlo Teaching Fellow in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department at UC Berkeley. Prior to founding Lilt, John was a Senior Research Scientist at Google working on Google Translate.
Denero holds a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley, a master’s degree in philosophy, and a bachelor’s in mathematical and computational science and symbolic systems from Stanford.
7. Keyvan Mohajer
President & CEO, SoundHound
Keyvan Mohajer is the President and Chief Executive Officer of SoundHound, a leader in conversational intelligence providing voice and conversational AI solutions that enable businesses to deliver better customer experiences. Built on proprietary technology, its voice AI offers speed and accuracy in multiple languages, serving product creators and service providers across industries such as retail, financial services, healthcare, automotive, smart devices, and restaurants.
SoundHound’s products, including Smart Answering, Smart Ordering, Dynamic Drive-Thru, and Amelia AI Agents, use voice technology to enhance customer interactions across industries. The company also offers SoundHound Chat AI, a voice assistant powered by generative AI, which supports millions of products and handles billions of interactions each year.
Before SoundHound, Mohajer founded and served as CTO at Zumo Software and was previously CTO at InsuranceHotline.com.
Mohajer earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Toronto.
8. Peter Wang
Chief AI & Innovation Officer, Co-Founder, Anaconda
Peter Wang is the Co-Founder and Chief AI and Innovation Officer of Anaconda, a data science platform widely used for Python-based data analysis and AI development. With more than 45 million users across 250,000 organizations, Anaconda supports corporate, research, and academic institutions in leveraging open-source technology for data science and AI initiatives. The company also plays an active role in maintaining and advancing key open-source projects within the data science ecosystem.
Wang leads Anaconda’s AI Incubator, which focuses on advancing core Python technologies and developing new frontiers in open-source AI and machine learning, especially in the areas of edge computing, data privacy, and decentralized computing.
Prior to founding Anaconda, Wang spent 15 years in software design and development across a broad range of areas, including 3D graphics, geophysics, large data simulation and visualization, financial risk modeling, and medical imaging.
As a creator of the PyData community and conferences, Wang devotes time and energy to growing the Python data science community and advocating for increasing data literacy around the world.
Wang holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Cornell University.
Peter Wang's Insight
“When we founded Anaconda 13 years ago, we bet everything on a vision that open source would be fundamental to the future of AI. It's rewarding to have a hand in empowering organizations to overcome the complexity of AI adoption by building a foundation of trusted, secure open source tools. As an entrepreneur, watching that vision scale to 47 million users has been extraordinary—because together with our community, we're helping teams turn the possibilities of AI into practical reality."
9. Kshitij Jain
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Joveo
Kshitij Jain (KJ) is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Joveo, a recruitment technology company that uses AI to match job seekers with the right opportunities. Built as a technology-first platform, Joveo applies data-driven algorithms to optimize job advertising and improve hiring outcomes.
With 20 years of recruitment marketing experience, KJ has a proven track record of building, leading, and managing innovative, high-growth organizations. At Joveo, he drives the company’s long-term product and go-to-market strategies, as well as day-to-day operations.
Before Joveo, KJ founded MoBolt, which created apply optimization technology. After its acquisition by Indeed in 2014, he was a part of the product team at the company. Prior to MoBolt, KJ ran product management for the Asia-Pacific region at Monster Worldwide, led cross-border sales for Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, and was their global recruiting subject matter expert.
10. Susan Kuo
COO and Co-Founder, Singular
Susan Kuo is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Singular. Susan’s extensive background in mobile ad tech, analytics, and gaming was integral in the creation of Singular. Before founding Singular, she held senior leadership roles at Onavo and InMobi. As an active member of the mobile community, she serves on the advisory board for several mobile-focused startups.
11. Anil Chitkara
Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Evolv Technology
Anil Chitkara is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Evolv Technology. Prior to co-founding Evolv, Mr. Chitkara was the Senior Vice President of Market Development for Oco, a business analytics software provider that was subsequently acquired by Deloitte. Prior to that, he was a Vice President of Parametric Technology Corporation, a provider of a variety of augmented reality, industrial IoT, PLM and CAD solutions.
Mr. Chitkara holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Boston University and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
12. Rajat Mishra
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Prezent AI
Rajat Mishra is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Prezent, an AI-powered business communication platform transforming how professionals create and deliver presentations. Under his leadership, Prezent has scaled rapidly, serving tens of thousands of professionals across over 150 Fortune 2000 companies.
Before founding Prezent, Mishra was a senior executive at Cisco, where he led multi-billion-dollar businesses. His inspiration for Prezent stemmed from a personal realization: ineffective communication holds back careers and stifles business success. Determined to change that, he launched Prezent with a mission to democratize great business communication through AI and data-driven personalization.
13. Marta Kerns
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pomelo Care
Marta Bralic Kerns is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pomelo Care, a leader in evidence-based maternity care. Marta founded Pomelo Care in 2021 after a career focused on healthcare innovation, value-based care, and eliminating health inequities and barriers to care. She saw an opportunity to use data science and machine learning to identify and manage risk to dramatically improve maternal health outcomes, reduce racial disparities, and decrease costs.
Marta began her career as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company, focusing on healthcare payment reform. While there, she consulted for a state Medicaid agency on transitioning to value-based care, starting with maternity care. This experience exposed her to the urgent challenges within the maternal health system.
In 2014, she joined Flatiron Health, where she became Senior Vice President of Business Development. There, she oversaw new business initiatives, strategic partnerships, and product innovation, using data and technology to personalize cancer care. Her experience at Flatiron deepened her understanding of how personalized care can drive better outcomes across healthcare.
Marta holds a bachelor’s degree in government and computer science from Harvard University.
14. Matanya Horowitz
Founder & CTO, AMP
Dr. Matanya Horowitz is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of AMP, a company he built with the objective of transforming the world’s waste from a liability to an asset for society. He developed and commercialized AMP’s breakthrough AI platform and robotics systems, which automate the identification and sorting of recyclables from mixed material streams, pioneering the use of AI in the waste industry and providing waste operators with a reliable source of sustainable diversion.
Horowitz holds bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, applied mathematics, and economics, along with a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also holds a doctorate in control and dynamical systems from the California Institute of Technology, with publications and research in control theory, path planning, and computer vision. Horowitz is a named inventor on 61 granted patents and pending patent applications in the waste and recycling industry, on devices, systems, AI and more, as well as being a frequent speaker at waste industry events.
15. Minna Song
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, EliseAI
Minna Song is the Founder and CEO of EliseAI, a New York City-based technology company dedicated to building the most advanced conversational AI platform in the world. Since founding the company in 2017, she has led its growth into a trusted partner for leading enterprises in property management and healthcare, helping them streamline operations, improve customer interactions, and achieve new levels of automation.
With a background in computer science from MIT, Minna is committed to developing AI technology that enables enterprises to enhance efficiency and customer service. Under her leadership, EliseAI continues to push the boundaries of conversational AI, aiming to redefine how businesses communicate and operate.
16. Kian Katanforoosh
CEO and Co-Founder, Workera
Kian Katanforoosh is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Workera, a skills intelligence platform that helps organizations assess and develop workforce capabilities. Workera provides insights into employee proficiency in high-demand skills, enabling companies to measure talent accurately and support targeted skill development.
In addition to his work leading Workera, Kian is also a lecturer at Stanford University, where he co-created their Deep Learning program alongside AI legend Andrew Ng and has helped teach AI to over 4 million people. Kian has been acknowledged for his teaching excellence by Stanford with the Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford’s highest teaching award, and the Centennial Award for Excellence in teaching.
17. Sanish Mondkar
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Legion Technologies
Sanish Mondkar is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Legion. He has over 20 years of leadership experience in products, technology, and cloud operations.
Before founding Legion, Sanish was the EVP and Chief Product Officer at SAP with responsibility for all procurement and business network areas, representing over $1B of annual revenue.
Prior to SAP, Sanish was Chief Product Officer and EVP at Ariba, where he was responsible for the creation of several market-leading enterprise products, including the Ariba Network from the ground up, which is the largest business network in the procurement space.
Sanish holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Pune University and a master’s degree in computer science from Cornell University.
18. Jeffrey Cardenas
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Apptronik
Jeff Cardenas is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apptronik, a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered humanoid robots. As a serial entrepreneur, Jeff is focused on bringing the groundbreaking advancements in humanoid robotics into the real world.
Under Jeff’s leadership, Apptronik has built some of the most advanced robots in the world, spanning from exoskeletons to humanoid torsos, biped mobility platforms, and unique robotic arms that lift more than they weigh. This experience culminated in the development of Apollo, the most advanced humanoid robot.
Cardenas specializes in technology commercialization and new product development. Before co-founding Apptronik in 2016 alongside Dr. Nick Paine and Dr. Luis Sentis, he worked at the Global Commercialization Group at the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Here, he worked with innovators from around the globe to take innovations out of the research lab and to the market.
Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s degree in technology commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin.
19. Dan Ryan
CEO and Co-Founder, VergeSense
Dan Ryan is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of VergeSense, a leading Occupancy Intelligence Platform that transforms workplace data into actionable insights. VergeSense unifies and analyzes data from sensors, Wi-Fi, badge systems, and space booking tools, enabling real estate and workplace teams to make smarter, faster decisions. Founded in 2017 within Y Combinator, VergeSense has pioneered AI-powered workplace analytics and recommendations, enabling enterprises to maximize space utilization, enhance employee experiences, and reduce real estate costs.
Dan’s passion for bridging the physical and digital worlds started with ByteLight, a company he founded in 2011 that introduced LED-based indoor positioning technology. After ByteLight was acquired by Acuity Brands in 2015, Dan helped launch Acuity’s IoT Division (Atrius) as Vice President of Product.
Dan holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Boston University.
20. Assaf Melochna
President and Co-Founder, Aquant
Assaf Melochna is the President and Co-Founder of Aquant, an AI platform built for service professionals working with complex equipment. Unlike generic AI, Aquant’s Agentic AI captures both documented and tacit knowledge, delivering expert-level answers instantly. This improves troubleshooting, cuts costs, enhances CX, and turns service operations into a revenue engine.
Melochna’s experience includes strong leadership skills built upon a strong technical foundation. He is an expert in service, and has business and technical expertise in enterprise software. Melochna started Aquant with his co-founder Shahar with the vision of helping service companies transform the way they deliver service through data and AI. Prior to starting Aquant, Melochna spent 10 years at ClickSoftware, where he served in various positions.
Melochna graduated from The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics.
Assaf Melochna's Insight
“Being recognized as one of the Top 50 Data Tech Entrepreneurs of 2025 reflects the hard work and innovation of the incredible team at Aquant. This recognition motivates us to continue pushing the boundaries of data and AI, empowering companies to unlock their full potential by using domain-specific AI to optimize efficiency and achieve peak performance.”
21. Dave Mariani
Chief Technology Officer, Founder, AtScale
Dave Mariani is the Chief Technology Officer and Founder of AtScale. AtScale enables smarter decision-making by accelerating the flow of data-driven insights. The company’s semantic layer platform simplifies, accelerates, and extends business intelligence and data science capabilities for enterprise customers across all industries. With AtScale, customers are empowered to democratize data, implement self-service BI and build a more agile analytics infrastructure for better, more impactful decision making.
Mariani is a hands-on technology executive with more than 25 years of experience in delivering Big Data, consumer Internet, internet advertising and hosted services platforms, creating nearly $800 million in company exits. He founded AtScale in 2013 to provide access to Big Data to everyone who needs it, regardless of data format, size or the type of tool business users want to use.
Previously, Mariani was VP at Klout where created the world’s largest social media data platform including a trillion row Hive data warehouse. Before that, he was a VP for Yahoo! and managed data engineering and analytics for the audience and advertising business ingesting over 20TBs of data per day and built the world’s largest multi-dimensional analytics platform.
Previously, Mariani was CTO for Bluelithium, where he managed one of the first display advertising networks delivering 300 million ads per day while delivering a multi-terabyte behavior targeting data warehouse. Before that he was CTO of Digital Impact, and delivered a SaaS email marketing platform and drove its sale to Acxiom Corporation. Previously, he was CTO and Founder of MineShare, where he built one of the world's first ROLAP platforms, selling the company to Digital Impact.
Mariani holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and business from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dave Mariani's Insight
“Entrepreneurship is about solving real problems with bold innovation—a principle that guided David P. Mariani, co-founder of AtScale, on his journey. With years of experience in data engineering and analytics, Mariani saw enterprises struggling to bridge the gap between business intelligence and big data. This challenge inspired him to pioneer the semantic layer, creating a solution that enables organizations to scale their analytics while maintaining governance, performance, and accessibility.”
Starting AtScale wasn’t just about building a company; it was about solving a problem I had lived through firsthand. We knew enterprises needed a way to make data accessible at scale without the trade-offs of traditional solutions. The semantic layer became the key to unlocking that potential, transforming the way organizations interact with their data.
Today, AtScale's AI-driven semantic layer empowers organizations worldwide, proving that innovation fueled by experience and persistence can drive lasting impact.”
22. Ashwin Kashyap
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, CyberCube
Ashwin Kashyap is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at CyberCube, where he leads the data, analytics, and product vision. CyberCube is a cyber risk modeling and analytics company that helps insurance organizations quantify and manage cyber risk. Its cloud-based platform combines data access with advanced analytics to support cyber insurance placement, underwriting, and risk aggregation management. CyberCube’s enterprise intelligence layer offers insights on millions of companies worldwide, modeling thousands of potential technology failures.
Kashyap has also held leadership roles at Symantec, RMS, and Ascend Analytics, with experience in product management, analytics, and engineering. Kashyap's background includes academic research in reinforcement learning and probabilistic methods, as well as experience in software engineering development.
Before joining CyberCube, Kashyap was a director of product management at Symantec and before that a senior manager of product at RMS. Earlier in his career, he worked with Infineon as a software engineer.
Kashyap graduated from the University of Michigan with a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science.
23. Rish Gupta
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Spot AI
Rish Gupta leads Spot AI as Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, building Video AI Agents for the physical world. By transforming traditional security cameras into AI teammates in safety, security and operations, Spot AI has grown to serve over 1000 customers across manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and education, indexing more daily video than YouTube.
Previously, Rish led Samsara's assets division to multi-million dollar success and founded Letsintern.com, which grew to more than 4 million users before a successful acquisition. A product leader known for bridging advanced technology with customer needs, Rish holds degrees from Stanford GSB and Delhi University.
24. Ben Edmond
CEO and Founder, Connectbase
Ben Edmond is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Connectbase, where he is responsible for leading the company's strategy, culture and operations. Edmond has 25 years of experience in the fiber, telecom and networking industries, encompassing broad expertise in the areas of executive leadership, strategy, product, customer experience, sales, marketing and operations.
Prior to founding Connectbase, Ben served as Chief Revenue Officer at Global Capacity, where he was responsible for all aspects of the company’s customer go-to-market strategy and execution.
25. Randy Cheung
Executive Chairman, Co-Founder, CipherHealth
Randy Cheung is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of CipherHealth. He co-founded the company after working in healthcare and experiencing firsthand a fundamental gap that was holding the industry back from more patient-centric care: communication. He saw the need for caregivers to embrace technology the way their patients had and developed the idea for a SaaS communication platform that connected the two communities at critical points along the care continuum.
After serving as Chief Executive Officer of the company, Randy moved into his current position as Executive Chairman of the Board. Previously, Randy managed business development for MDLand International, a CCHIT-accredited electronic medical record (EMR) company located in New York City. He also consulted for Empath Consulting and was in sales at Abbott Laboratories.
Randy holds a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and master of public health from Yale University.
26. Atindriyo Sanyal
Founder and CTO, Galileo
Atindriyo Sanyal is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Galileo. Prior to Galileo, Atindriyo was an engineering leader at Uber AI, where he was responsible for machine learning initiatives and was one of the architects of the world's first feature store, Michelangelo. He was also an early engineer on Siri at Apple, building the foundational technology and infrastructure that democratized ML at Apple.
27. Vince Gaydarzhiev
President and Founder, Alcatraz AI
Vince Gaydarzhiev is the Founder and President of Alcatraz AI, a global provider of AI-powered biometric access control solutions revolutionizing security through facial authentication. Vince brings over 10 years of experience in technology engineering to the role, having worked with companies like NVIDIA, where he worked on multimedia systems for the automotive industry that were used for the Tesla Model S, BMW, and Audi.
Vince also previously worked as an engineer for Apple, where he led the hardware prototype engineering team, and was involved in the early development of FaceID. His tenure with NVIDIA and Apple led Vince to see a clear need for better, future-proof access control for the physical and mobile world.
In 2016, Vince founded Alcatraz AI, driven by his passion for leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance safety and efficiency to create a safer world through simple, secure, and trusted biometric authentication. With his mastery of hardware and algorithms, Vince developed Alcatraz AI’s flagship product, the Rock, which now protects over one million Fortune 500 employees.
Alcatraz AI’s latest product, Rock X, builds on its previous technology, providing facial authentication for outdoor environments in varying weather and lighting conditions. In addition to his work at Alcatraz AI, Gaydarzhiev advises other startups and founders, drawing on his experience as a solo founder in the technology sector.
Vince Gaydarzhiev's Insight
“As an entrepreneur in the security industry, it’s been fascinating to see the industry evolve alongside advances in the technical ecosystem, specifically within AI-powered biometrics. I’m proud to be a part of the group of innovators redefining what is possible with modern security solutions. For me, it was the optimal move to pursue development of Alcatraz AI’s unique biometric access control system–which utilizes privacy-first facial authentication to secure buildings and safe spaces. Since Alcatraz A’s founding, our products have enabled convenient and secure access to millions of Fortune 500 employees. I’m looking forward to fueling the next wave of AI-technology, as organizations upgrade their security infrastructure to combat modern threats and challenges.”
28. Joanna Riley
CEO and Co-Founder, Censia
Joanna Riley is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Censia, a talent intelligence platform that leverages AI to predictively match top talent to opportunities at scale. It helps organizations enhance workforce planning, improve internal mobility, and make data-driven, fairer hiring decisions while integrating with existing HR systems.
Censia delivers talent and skills data directly into the HR systems companies already use, in weeks rather than months. Its AI-powered insights optimize talent pipelines, increase workforce diversity, and reduce reliance on traditional recruitment methods. Customers using Censia see talent pipelines that are up to 300% more diverse, supported by nearly a decade of proprietary skills-based modeling.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos 2025, Riley highlighted the global skills crisis, citing that 85% of companies must rethink workforce strategies by 2025. Under her leadership, Censia has partnered with Fortune 500 companies like Verizon, increasing employee data coverage from 5% to 100% in weeks and boosting internal mobility by 60%.
29. Cameron Andrews
Founder and President, Sirona Medical
Cameron Andrews is the Founder and President of Sirona Medical. Sirona Medical is a San Francisco-based company developing a cloud-native platform that unifies radiology IT applications, including worklist, viewer, reporter, and AI tools, into a single workspace designed for modern radiology practices. Sirona’s radiology operating system, RadOS, is designed to simplify radiologists’ workflows while enhancing their productivity through AI-powered solutions.
Previously, Andrews was an associate at Lux Capital. He holds a master’s degree in biomedical informatics and a bachelor’s degree in biomedical computation from Stanford University.
Cameron Andrews's Insight
“Sirona’s mission is to accelerate the transition to AI-powered healthcare. Radiology has long been at the forefront of AI’s introduction into clinical medicine. What became clear to us about radiology seven years ago is now becoming evident across healthcare more broadly: AI will reinvent the practice of medicine, but only after the outdated, deeply entrenched software systems powering clinical care are rebuilt for the AI age.
When we started Sirona, raising capital to build software for doctors was nearly impossible. Over $4 billion had been spent developing AI for medical imaging, with little to show for it. It took our team of 60 brilliant individuals half a decade and $100 million to create this technological future for radiology. During that time, the world began to embrace the technological vision for the future of medicine that we’ve been championing since our inception.
I’ve had very little to do with Sirona’s success, aside from one thing I’m most proud of: convincing enough smart people that something wildly unreasonable was possible, so that other smart people could make that unreasonable thing a reality. Sirona’s impact belongs to our employees. Creating the space for them to succeed is what entrepreneurship means to me.”
30. Leeor Solnik
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, qbiq
Leeor Solnik is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of qbiq. qbiq’s software allows both architects and non-architects to quickly plan, visualize, and optimize spaces by automatically generating design packages based on user inputs. From seat counts to finish materials, the platform delivers optimized floor plans, 3D visualizations, architectural programs, quantity estimates, Revit/CAD models, and more.
By simplifying traditionally complex design processes, qbiq helps accelerate decision-making and transactions for brokers, landlords, tenants, architects, general contractors, and co-working operators.
31. Sasan Amini
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Clear Labs
Sasan Amini is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clear Labs. Clear Labs uses next-generation sequencing (NGS) to simplify complex diagnostics for clinical and applied markets. Its fully automated platform combines DNA sequencing, robotics, and cloud-based analytics to make genomic applications more accessible.
Clear Labs’ platform supports faster, more accurate detection of foodborne pathogens and infectious diseases, including SARS-CoV-2. With this approach, Clear Labs aims to help organizations better understand, track, and mitigate emerging pathogens.
Amini brings 14 years of experience to his current role. Prior to serving as the CEO of Clear Labs, he worked in the Advanced Research department at Illumina. Sasan earned his PhD in genomics from Princeton University and holds multiple patents and publications in the field.
32. Anoop Mathew
Co-Founder and CTO, Docket
Anoop Mathew is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Docket. DocketAI is an AI-powered sales engineering platform designed to help account executives improve productivity and win rates. The platform provides instant sales answers, automates RFP responses, and offers insights from top performers by unifying sales data with generative AI through its Sales KnowledgeLake.
Previously, Mathew founded iterFlow, and before that served as a director of sales engineering at FullContact. Earlier in his career, he worked with XLQuest, ServiceFirst as a Python- Django developer.
Mathew holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Cochin University of Science and Technology.
33. Alexandr Wang
CEO and Founder, Scale AI
Alexandr Wang is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Scale AI. Scale’s Generative AI Platform helps organizations customize large language models using their own data, unlocking AI capabilities tailored to their specific needs. The Scale Data Engine provides tools to collect, curate, and annotate high-quality data, along with features for model evaluation and optimization.
Wang brings 11 years of experience to his current role. Before joining Scale AI, Wang was an algorithm developer at Hudson River Trading and before that a tech lead at Quora. Earlier in his career, he was a software engineer at Addepar.
Wang graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science.
34. Adam Singolda
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Taboola
Adam Singolda is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Taboola, a technology company that powers content recommendations across the open web. Taboola’s platform helps businesses reach new audiences through performance advertising, connecting advertisers with 600 million daily active users across leading publishers and devices.
Taboola partners with publishers such as NBC News and Yahoo!, as well as device manufacturers like Samsung and Xiaomi, to support audience growth and revenue. Its ad platform, Realize, leverages unique data and specialized algorithms to deliver measurable outcomes at scale.
Singolda founded Taboola in 2007, and the platform is now used by websites, devices, and mobile apps worldwide to support monetization and user engagement. Taboola has long-term partnerships with digital properties such as CNBC, BBC, NBC News, Business Insider, The Independent, and El Mundo.
More than 15,000 advertisers use Taboola to reach over 500 million daily active users. After acquiring Connexity in 2021, Taboola also became a major provider of e-commerce recommendations, driving over 1 million monthly transactions for brands including Walmart, Macy’s, Wayfair, Skechers, and eBay.
Singolda holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and math from The Open University.
35. Ajeet Singh
Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, ThoughtSpot
Ajeet Singh is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of ThoughtSpot, a company focused on advancing business analytics with search and AI. ThoughtSpot’s AI-native Intelligence Platform is designed for enterprises, helping users explore data, ask questions, and uncover insights to support data-driven decision-making. Prior to founding ThoughtSpot, he was Co-Founder and Chief Products Officer at Nutanix, a company known for its work in enterprise cloud technology.
Prior to Nutanix, Singh served as senior director of product management at Aster Data, later acquired by Teradata for $300 million. Singh has also held business and technical roles at Oracle, where he was part of the team that first launched Oracle Database to the Amazon EC2 cloud.
Singh holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
36. Alex Bouzari
Chairman, Co-Founder and CEO, DataDirect Networks
Alex Bouzari is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of DataDirect Networks (DDN), a company specializing in AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and data management solutions. For more than two decades, DDN has focused on helping organizations manage, store, and analyze large-scale data to support innovation across industries.
Bouzari recognized early on the connection between data-centric computing and AI, guiding DDN’s development of solutions for complex challenges in fields such as space exploration and personalized medicine. Under his leadership, DDN has become a key technology partner for organizations requiring scalable, high-performance data systems.
Today, DDN provides end-to-end solutions designed for AI and HPC workloads, helping enterprises maximize the value of their data. The company works with research institutions, government agencies, and private sector companies addressing data-intensive problems across science, healthcare, and technology.
Previously, Bouzari was President at Mega Drive Systems. Earlier in his career, he served as CEO of Personal Writer. Bouzari holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and economics from Caltech.
37. Akash Gupta
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GreyOrange
Akash Gupta is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GreyOrange. GreyOrange provides retailers, warehouse operators, and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) worldwide with automated robotic fulfillment and inventory optimization solutions. Its technology helps customers increase productivity, mitigate labor challenges, and reduce risk—all while enhancing experiences for both their customers and employees.
As Chief Executive Officer, Gupta primarily focuses on driving research and development and attracting global talent as the company uniquely blends AI, software design, robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and data science to transform fulfillment for companies worldwide. Gupta leads innovation across three R&D centers in the United States and India from their Delhi headquarters.
Gupta co-founded GreyOrange while studying at BITS Pilani in India, after achieving success in global robotics competitions alongside co-founder Samay Kohli. In addition to his work at GreyOrange, Gupta has mentored students and led workshops at more than 25 educational institutions, including Stanford University, MIT, and several IITs.
Gupta holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.
38. Aaron Matos
Founder, Paradox
Aaron Matos is the founder and Executive Chairman of Paradox, a company using assistive intelligence to improve the recruiting experience. With a background in founding ventures like Jobing.com and Recruiting.com, Matos has been a pivotal figure in the talent acquisition technology market. His leadership has driven Paradox to serve tens of thousands of clients and millions of job seekers worldwide.
39. Adi Azaria
Co-Founder, Sisense
Adi Azaria is the Co-Founder of Sisense, an API-first analytics platform that modernizes businesses by embedding in-context analytics within applications, leading to action-oriented insights that enhance decision intelligence. With over 15 years of experience, he has a proven track record of driving growth through high-performing teams and early adoption of technologies like AI. Established in Israel in 2004, Sisense currently has locations in New York, London, and Tel Aviv, and has served over 2,000 customers.
Previously, Azaria was a software developer at Invoke Solutions. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Reichman University.
40. Adam Prout
Co-Founder, SingleStore
Adam Prout is the Co-Founder of SingleStore, a database platform designed for real-time data processing and analytics. SingleStore helps organizations build and scale modern applications by enabling them to transact, analyze, and contextualize data within a single platform.
Prout brings 19 years of experience to his current role. Before joining SingleStore, he was a software engineer at Microsoft. Prout graduated from the University of Waterloo with a master's degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science.
41. Aaron Katz
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, ClickHouse
Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ClickHouse, an open-source columnar database management system that allows for real-time data processing and analytics. ClickHouse Cloud is designed for high performance, offering fast query speeds that make it well-suited for processing large volumes of data.
Katz first has 26 years of experience and first got his start in 1999 as a sales operations manager of national accounts at BenefitPoint. From there, he went on to salesforce.com, before eventually rising to Chief Revenue Officer at Elastic, his most recent position prior to joining ClickHouse. Katz graduated from the University of California, Davis with a bachelor’s degree in managerial economics.
42. Amit Garg
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, HiLabs
Amit Garg is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of HiLabs, a data analytics platform focused on helping healthcare organizations generate insights from their own data. HiLabs works with healthcare organizations to address data quality challenges and uncover opportunities for operational improvement.
As CEO, Garg draws on experience spanning business development, product development, operations, consulting, and financial analysis. His leadership helps guide the company’s approach to applying advanced analytics and technology to solve complex problems in healthcare data management.
Prior to HiLabs, Garg helped lead two companies from startup to acquisition. At Northrop Grumman, he led the implementation of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Encounters Data Processing System (EDPS), created to help health plans calculate $200 billion in risk-adjusted capitated payments.
Garg holds an MBA in economics from the Yale University School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.
43. Wardah Inam
CEO and Founder, Overjet
Wardah Inam is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Overjet, a company specializing in dental AI technology. Overjet develops artificial intelligence tools that help dental organizations enhance diagnostic accuracy and improve patient care.Founded by experts from MIT and Harvard, Overjet’s FDA-cleared technology provides an objective standard for detecting dental conditions, helping dentists identify pathologies more precisely and explain findings more clearly to patients.
Inam brings eight years of experience to her current role. Before joining Overjet, she was a lead product manager at Q bio. Before that, she was a postdoctoral associate at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Earlier in her career, she was a principal investigator of robotics research at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology.
Inam holds a bachelor’s degree from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, as well as a PhD and master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
44. Megan Fales
CEO and Co-Founder, Transcenda
Megan Fales is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Transcenda, a global engineering, design, and strategy consultancy that helps businesses scale, undergo digital transformation, and bring new technology products to market. At Transcenda, she focuses on driving performance improvement and fostering innovation across teams, while the company delivers services in web and mobile development, UX/UI design, AI and machine learning, data science, DevOps, project management, and quality assurance.
With over 15 years of experience working with international teams, Fales is skilled at managing complex, high-pressure situations, making strategic decisions, and motivating talent. Her people-first leadership style has played a key role in Transcenda’s consistent double-digit year-over-year growth.
Before founding Transcenda in 2019, Fales served as Managing Director of Automotive & Mobility and U.S. East at Star, and earlier held business development roles at Gartner and JRD Systems. She holds a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Central Michigan University.
45. Alexander Gallego
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Redpanda Data
Alexander Gallego is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Redpanda Data, a unified streaming data platform designed for developers. API-compatible with Apache Kafka, Redpanda offers a streamlined architecture that supports both real-time and historical data, providing a fast, scalable, and cost-effective solution for enterprise data streaming. Gallego founded Redpanda in 2019 with the goal of making real-time data more accessible to developers
Prior to Redpanda, Gallego was the Co-Founder and CTO of Concord.io, a stream-processing engine acquired by Akamai in 2016. Gallego began his career as a hacker and builder and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and cryptography from NYU.
46. Jennifer Bisceglie
Founder & Executive Vice Chair of the Board, Interos
Jennifer Bisceglie is the Founder and Executive Vice Chair of the Board of Interos, a supply chain risk intelligence company. Interos provides technology that helps organizations discover, map, and monitor supply chain risks across the entire supplier lifecycle, allowing businesses to respond quickly to emerging threats.
The company’s automated platform continuously tracks extended supply chains in real time, helping organizations identify and manage risks related to regulatory compliance, unethical labor practices, cyber threats, and other vulnerabilities. Interos serves commercial, government, and public sector customers, including Global Fortune 500 companies and Five Eyes nations.
Previously, Bisceglie was a CEO at Quantum Leaps and before that a CEO at Vigillence. Earlier in her career, she worked with Manhattan Associates as a director of federal programs. She holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from West Virginia University.
47. Sowmiya Narayanan
Co-Founder and CTO, Lily AI
Sowmiya Chocka Narayanan is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Lily AI, a retail AI company that helps retailers and brands align product data with how customers search and shop. By applying generative AI, computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning, Lily AI enhances product attribution and discovery across retail platforms.
Lily AI integrates with e-commerce sites, marketplaces, and product management systems to improve search relevance and personalization. The platform helps retailers maximize existing technology investments by improving product data quality and enabling more intuitive shopping experiences.
Previously, Sowmiya has worked at companies like Plato, Box, Pocket Gems, Yahoo!, and Texas Instruments, where Sowmiya has made significant contributions in software development and engineering leadership.
Chocka holds a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in information technology from PSG College of Technology.
48. Melanie Fellay
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Spekit
Melanie Fellay is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Spekit, an AI-powered enablement platform designed to support sales teams directly within their workflows. Spekit delivers training, content, and process guidance in real time, helping sales representatives access the information they need without leaving the tools they already use.
By centralizing enablement materials and surfacing them automatically as sales teams work, Spekit helps organizations improve productivity and ensure consistent execution. The platform integrates playbooks, case studies, process guidance, and coaching into everyday workflows, aligning enablement with how modern sales teams operate.
Fellay has 14 years of experience and first got her start in 2011 as a recitation leader of business statistics at University of Colorado Boulder. From there, she went on to Surna Inc., before eventually rising to Chief of Staff at RealtyShares, her most recent position prior to joining Spekit.
Fellay graduated from University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance.
49. Alexander Watson
Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Gretel.ai
Alexander Watson is the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Gretel.ai, a multimodal synthetic data platform that leverages advanced generative AI and privacy-enhancing technologies. Developers use Gretel to generate artificial datasets with the same characteristics as real data, so they can develop and test AI models without compromising privacy.
Watson brings 23 years of experience to his current role. Before joining Gretel.ai, Watson was a GM at Amazon Macie and before that a CEO and Founder at harvest.ai. Earlier in his career, he worked with the United States Department of Defense as a global network exploitation analyst.
Watson graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a master’s degree in computer engineering and from Indiana University Bloomington with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.
50. Andrew Eye
CEO & Founder, ClosedLoop
Andrew Eye is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ClosedLoop, a healthcare data science platform designed to help healthcare organizations leverage AI to improve outcomes and reduce costs. Purpose-built for healthcare, it combines an end-to-end machine learning platform with a comprehensive library of healthcare-specific features and model templates. Customers use ClosedLoop’s Explainable AI to drive clinical excellence, operational efficiency, value-based contracts, and enhanced revenue.
Eye’s career spans more than 20 years across both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Before founding ClosedLoop in 2017, he co-founded Boxer, a mobile software company whose email product was downloaded by millions of users and earned a Webby nomination for productivity apps before being acquired by VMware. Earlier, he co-founded the cybersecurity firm Ciphent, which grew to nearly 100 employees and over 1,000 customers before being acquired by Accuvant (now Optiv).
In addition to his entrepreneurial work, Eye served as CEO of Bodkin Consulting Group, advising Fortune 500 brands on interactive marketing strategies. He began his career as a software architect, working with NASA, i2 Technologies, and the U.S. Marine Corps.
Eye holds a bachelor’s degree in management information technology from Virginia Tech.
