Sri Satish Ambati
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 and machine learning software. Prior to H2O.ai, he co-founded Platfora, a big data analytics company later acquired by Workday, Inc.
Early life and education
Ambati was born in India. He attended the University of Memphis, where he earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. He later pursued academic sabbaticals focused on theoretical neuroscience at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.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. He also served as the director of engineering at DataStax.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 with Cliff Click. Under his leadership as CEO, the company developed the H2O open-source platform, which became widely used for distributed machine learning. He has advocated for the "democratization of AI," aiming to make machine learning tools accessible to non-experts through products like H2O Driverless AI.
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.Awards and recognition
- 2019: Named one of the "12 People to Watch" by Datanami
- 2021: Named "AI Person of the Year" at the 5th Annual AI Achievement Awards.