Sri Satish Ambati | |
|---|---|
| Born | India |
| Other names | Srisatesh Ambati [1] |
| Education | University of Memphis (MS) |
| Occupations | Technology executive, entrepreneur |
| Known for | Co-founding H2O.ai and Platfora; advocating for democratization of AI |
| Title | CEO 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. From 2019 to the present, the company has received significant media coverage for Ambati's efforts to "democratize" artificial intelligence by making high-level machine learning tools accessible to non-experts. [2] [3] Prior to H2O.ai, he co-founded Platfora, a big data analytics company later acquired by Workday, Inc. [4]
Ambati was born in India. [5] He attended the University of Memphis, where in 2000 he earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science under the supervision of Stan Franklin. [6] He later pursued academic sabbaticals focused on theoretical neuroscience at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. [4]
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. He also served as the director of engineering at DataStax. [4] [7]
In 2011, Ambati founded Platfora, a company specializing in big data analytics tools for Apache Hadoop. Platfora was later acquired by Workday in 2016.
In 2012, Ambati co-founded H2O.ai (originally 0xdata) with Cliff Click. [8] Under his leadership as CEO, the company developed the H2O open-source platform, which became widely used for distributed machine learning. [4] The company's flagship open-source platform H2O is used by over 20,000 organizations globally to scale machine learning workflows. [3] The company reached a valuation of $1.7 billion following a Series E funding round in 2021. [9]
Ambati is a frequent speaker at global forums such as the World Economic Forum, where he has contributed to reports on the impact of AI in financial services. [10] In 2023, he was a speaker at the Ai4 conference in Last Vegas, where he co-led a roundtable entitled Democratizing Large Language Models. [11] In 2024, he was a featured speaker at the Collision conference, discussing AI governance and the future of global wealth creation through technology. [12]
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.