Data Infrastructure Built for the Cloud & AI Era
Our Story
We believe modern data-driven organizations shouldn’t have to choose between speed, simplicity, scale, or sustainability when storing, managing, processing, and analyzing their data. In the cloud and AI era, these should be foundational elements in every data environment – not points of compromise. That’s why we’re building a software-defined, hybrid cloud-based approach to data management that supports artificial intelligence, machine learning, high-performance computing, and other next-generation workloads flawlessly.
In 2013, as this next generation of performance-intensive workloads was becoming more pervasive in the enterprise, our founders set out with a blank sheet of paper, a novel programming language, and a vision to create a fundamentally different approach to managing data that would eradicate the compromises of the past and could power the future.
The WEKA® Data Platform was purpose-built to seamlessly and sustainably deliver speed, simplicity, and scale that meets the needs of modern enterprises and research organizations without compromise. Its advanced, software-defined architecture supports next-generation workloads in virtually any location with cloud simplicity and on-premises performance.
Mind-bending speed. Seductive simplicity. Infinite scalability. Effortless sustainability. The WEKA Data Platform transforms stagnant data storage silos into dynamic data pipelines that can fuel AI, ML, and HPC workloads and seamlessly spans edge, core, cloud, hybrid, and multicloud data environments. WEKA is powering a new era of sustainable data innovation in the world’s leading research organizations and enterprises, helping them to innovate at the speed of science, create without limits, and turn ideas into outcomes.
WEKA Leadership Team Board of Directors
Liran co-founded WEKA in 2013. Today, he guides the company’s long-term vision and strategy as its Chief Executive Officer. He previously served as WEKA’s Chief Technology Officer.
Before establishing WEKA, Liran co-founded and led research and development at social startup Fusic, where he was responsible for the engineering, design, and development of its rich social media application portfolio. Prior to Fusic, Liran was the principal software architect and a founding member of the technical team at XIV Storage Systems before its acquisition by IBM in 2007; he then managed XIV’s hardware and platform teams at IBM for several years.
Before joining XIV, Liran served as a Software Engineer with the rank of Captain in the Israeli Defense Forces for five years. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University.
Amit is WEKA’s Executive Chairman, overseeing its administrative and operational functions.
A seasoned veteran of the enterprise technology industry, Amit has over 30 years of executive leadership experience at innovative, high-growth technology companies, including Avi Networks (acquired by VMware), Zenprise (acquired by Citrix), Terracotta (acquired by Software AG), and NetApp.
He earned a Master of Business Administration degree and a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as a Bachelor of Science degree from Brown University.
Hoang is WEKA’s chief financial officer (CFO), responsible for all aspects of the company’s financial strategy and operations as it continues to scale amid explosive growth.
A seasoned technology executive, Hoang served as CFO at Amplitude Inc. from 2019 to 2023, helping to take the company public in September 2021. Before that, he was the chief operating officer and CFO of GoFundMe. He also held various leadership positions at Intuit, Demandforce, and Deloitte. He currently serves on the board of the software company Revinate, Inc.
Iris is WEKA’s Chief People & Culture Officer (CPCO), responsible for the company’s global human resources organization, recruiting and talent development, and culture and employee experience.
A veteran human resources and recruiting professional, Iris brings over two decades of experience to WEKA, working with public and privately held growth-stage companies. Prior to WEKA, she served as the Chief People Officer at AnyRoad, a leading experiential marketing platform provider. Before that, Iris held a number of HR and recruiting leadership roles, most notably at Lyft, where she served as the Head of Talent Acquisition and People Ops for the company’s autonomous vehicle division, building it from a team of seven people to more than 400 before leading its acquisition by Toyota. She also founded and ran a successful boutique technology recruiting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly a decade.
Iris earned dual bachelor’s degrees in human resources and organizational behavior and anthropology from the University of Haifa in Israel.
Sean Hiss is Chief of Staff to the CEO at WEKA and also serves as the company’s Vice President of Global GTM Operations, with responsibility for sales, marketing and customer success operations.
Sean has over 25 years of marketing, sales, and business operations experience working with some of the world’s largest, most trusted brands. Before joining WEKA, he served as Vice President of Marketing Strategy, Planning, and Operations and Chief of Staff to the CMO at Hitachi Vantara. He has also held various leadership positions at DataStax, Equinix, Cisco, Enfocus Software, and Adobe.
He earned dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Economics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Lauren is WEKA’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), responsible for leading the company’s global marketing organization and strategy.
She is a veteran marketing executive and celebrated author, board member, and angel investor with a proven track record of accelerating revenue growth for enterprise software companies. Lauren has previously served as the CMO of Salesloft and Talend and held executive leadership positions at Box, Salesforce, and Adroll. Before joining WEKA, she was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Scale Venture Partners. She sits on the boards of Thryv and USA for UNFPA.
Lauren has received numerous awards for her work, including being named a “Top 50 Women in Revenue” and “Influential Woman in Business” by the San Francisco Business Times. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Emerson University.
Maor co-founded WEKA in 2013. Today, he serves as the company’s Chief Architect, responsible for the design and development of the WEKA Data Platform.
He brings over two decades of experience and an extensive technical skillset to WEKA. He previously served as the XIV Storage platform project and team lead at IBM. Prior to IBM, he developed state-of-the-art collision avoidance technologies at Mobileye. Early in his career, he headed up an elite team of developers working on an award-winning project while serving in Israel’s Defense Forces.
Maor earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration degree in Business from Tel Aviv University.
Lior is WEKA’s Chief Engineering Officer responsible for the company’s global research and development (R&D) organization, engineering teams, and the development of the WEKA® Data Platform.
He has over 20 years of experience building R&D organizations at global software companies. Before joining WEKA, Lior served as Chief Engineering Officer of Cybereason, a cybersecurity software company, where he scaled the company’s engineering team to support significant, sustained growth. He has also held R&D leadership positions at Playbuzz and Imperva.
Nilesh is WEKA’s Chief Product Officer (CPO), responsible for developing the company’s mid-to-long-term product and solutions roadmap and driving associated technology alliances and services delivery.
A veteran of the information technology industry, Nilesh brings more than 30 years of experience to WEKA, having served in several product management and marketing leadership roles at Intel, NetApp, and Palo Alto Networks, among others. Prior to WEKA, he was Executive Vice President of the Secure Solutions business unit at Digital14, where he managed a broad portfolio of communication and data management solutions built on an encrypted, zero-trust security platform.
Nilesh earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Shivaji University and a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Louisiana State University.
Shimon is WEKA’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), responsible for engaging with the company’s customers and partners to track emerging trends and bring actionable feedback and insights to its Engineering and Product Management teams. He previously held leadership positions in the company’s customer success and sales engineering functions.
Shimon brings deep enterprise IT domain expertise to WEKA, having previously run IT and support services at Primary Data, XtremIO (acquired by EMC), IBM, and XIV Storage, where he met WEKA’s founding team. He studied Computer Science and Philosophy at Ramat Gan University.
Omri co-founded WEKA in 2013. Today, he serves as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for helping to shape its long-term strategy. He previously served as WEKA’s Chief Operating Officer.
An enterprise technology industry veteran, Omri brings over 30 years of experience to WEKA, spanning software research and development, product management, marketing, and operations. Before establishing WEKA, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product at XIV Storage before IBM acquired the company in 2007. He then served as part of the XIV leadership team at IBM, helping the business unit to reach half a billion dollars in sales. He has also held various technical and product-centric telecommunications and embedded software development positions.
Omri earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, a Master of Science degree, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Pure Mathematics from Tel Aviv University.
Efraim Grynberg is WEKA’s Vice President of Customer Success, overseeing the company’s global customer support and services organizations and driving WEKA’s customer-first culture. He previously led the company’s global sales engineering team.
Efraim has over 20 years of experience in information technology, focusing on innovative data storage technologies at startups and large enterprises. His multifaceted expertise includes engineering, global services, sales, and business development, often serving as the bridge between those areas. His global experience spans North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Efraim studied Physics at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Our Investors
“WEKA pioneered the concept of a software, platform-based approach that is revolutionizing modern enterprise data, then forged and hardened its technology in some of the largest, most demanding AI projects on the planet. Valor has a long history in the development of artificial intelligence, beginning with our investment in DeepMind in 2013, and we believe WEKA is positioned to be an integral part of the acceleration of the technology going forward. Valor is proud to partner with WEKA to support the company through its next phase of growth and beyond.”
“We believe WEKA is a leader in the growing green data movement, helping some of the world’s best companies drastically improve their performance while providing the potential to avoid millions of tons of carbon. The WEKA Data Platform enables 10-100x performance gains for AI/ML workloads so customers can get the most out of their data, whether operating on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid and multicloud configurations.”
“WEKA unequivocally increases the utilization rate of GPUs for both training and inference. The AI companies with the highest GPU utilization rates should be able to choose between faster time to market, lower cost or higher quality than competitors with lower GPU utilization rates.”
“Since investing in WEKA in early 2022, the company has experienced explosive growth driven by its superior technology and strong management team. WEKA’s differentiated, software-defined architecture is uniquely suited for the most advanced high-performance computing applications, including enabling the massive trend of generative AI. We are proud to partner with such a talented and capable management team.”
“WEKA helps HPE customers build agile and scalable solutions across a variety of use cases, including AI, high-performance computing, and life sciences. We’re thrilled to participate in WEKA’s Series D funding as the company looks to grow its operations and team and continue to deliver innovative solutions to customers.”
“I’ve been following WEKA’s transformation from a deep tech company in its seed round to the emerging category leader it is today. The company’s rapid expansion, growing sophisticated customer base, and the strength of the recent additions to its executive leadership team all drove 10D’s decision to participate in WEKA’s Series D round.”
“We believe WEKA is uniquely positioned to support a significant transformation in the market for data-intensive applications using machine learning and AI. The WEKA platform delivers unparalleled computing performance while reducing energy consumption and facilitating innovation in several critical categories, including autonomous driving, essential healthcare applications, and more. Lumir is proud to support Liran, Amit, Omri, Maor, and the rest of the WEKA team on its journey. It’s rare to see a team lead a paradigm shift with such humility.”
Careers at WEKA
WEKA is growing fast! We’re looking for smart, dedicated, driven individuals that want to help the world’s most innovative organizations solve complex data management challenges.
“Everyone at WEKA works so hard, and we come together to do some really amazing things. It’s a rush to be surrounded by so much talent and brains here.”
“One of the things I love about working at WEKA is that my diverse perspective is really valued and celebrated.”
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Open Positions
