Sri Satish Ambati

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Sri Satish Ambati
Born
India
Education University of Memphis (MS)
OccupationsTechnology executive, entrepreneur
Known forCo-founding H2O.ai and Platfora; advocating for democratization of AI
TitleCEO and Co-founder of H2O.ai

Sri Satish Ambati is an Indian-American technology executive and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of H2O.ai, a company specializing in open-source artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning software. Prior to H2O.ai, he co-founded Platfora, a big data analytics company later acquired by Workday, Inc. [1]

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Early life and education

Ambati was born in India. [2] He attended the University of Memphis, where he earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. [3] He later pursued academic sabbaticals focused on theoretical neuroscience at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. [1]

Career

Ambati's early career included engineering and leadership roles at several technology startups, including RightOrder, where he worked on NoSQL indexing, and Azul Systems, where he was a partner and performance engineer focused on Java scalability. [4] He also served as the director of engineering at DataStax. [1]

In 2011, Ambati founded Platfora, a company specializing in big data analytics tools for Apache Hadoop. Platfora was later acquired by Workday in 2016. [3]

In 2012, Ambati co-founded H2O.ai (originally 0xdata) with Cliff Click. Under his leadership as CEO, the company developed the H2O open-source platform, which became widely used for distributed machine learning. [1] He has advocated for the "democratization of AI," aiming to make machine learning tools accessible to non-experts through products like H2O Driverless AI. [2]

Philanthropy

During the Delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, Ambati spearheaded the "o2forindia.org" initiative. The project sourced and distributed oxygen concentrators to more than 200 public health organizations in rural and Tier 2 cities across India. [2] [3]

Awards and recognition

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Sri Ambati, CEO & Co-Founder at H2O.ai Biography". Rosenblatt Securities. Retrieved 2026-01-30.
  2. 1 2 3 "Purpose-Driven AI: How Sri Ambati Leads H2O.ai Forward". The Key Executives. 2025-08-27. Retrieved 2026-01-30.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Sri Ambati - IndiaAI". IndiaAI. Retrieved 2026-01-30.
  4. Keynote by SriSatish Ambati - H2O World 2018 NYC. H2O.ai. 2018-06-21. Retrieved 2026-01-30.
  5. "The 5th AI Award Winners". AI Awards. Retrieved 2026-01-30.