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Over the previous decade, corporations like Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, and Google have made it simpler for enterprises to retailer, course of, and analyze knowledge at scale. Their platforms provide highly effective capabilities out of the field, however additionally they include trade-offs. Most notably, the necessity to function inside a single vendor’s ecosystem.
For a lot of organizations, that mannequin has labored properly. For others, it has raised questions on flexibility and management. Now, a brand new participant has entered the market with a distinct strategy that provides a totally managed expertise with out locking prospects right into a proprietary stack.
Ryft, a Tel Aviv–primarily based startup, has simply emerged from stealth with $8 million in seed funding and a platform targeted on giving enterprises larger autonomy over their knowledge infrastructure. Its pitch is straightforward: make it simply as simple to handle your personal knowledge as it’s at hand it off to a vendor.
The seed funding was led by Index Ventures and joined by Bessemer Enterprise Companions and members of the founding groups at Wiz and Eon, in addition to executives from Zscaler, Crowdstrike, Confluent, and Cisco.
On the coronary heart of Ryft’s platform is a managed knowledge layer constructed on Apache Iceberg, the main open-source desk format for contemporary knowledge lakes. Iceberg permits organizations to separate storage and compute, permits options like time journey and roll again, and avoids the constraints of vendor-specific architectures. It has turn into the popular basis for corporations trying to scale whereas sustaining flexibility and openness.
Ryft builds on that basis by dealing with the day-to-day complexity that usually retains groups from taking full management of their knowledge. Duties like optimization, governance, compliance, and catastrophe restoration are all managed behind the scenes. The objective is to let enterprises profit from open structure with out taking over the operational burden that normally comes with it.
Credit: Ryft.io
That target ease and management is what Ryft’s founding workforce sees as key to serving to enterprises keep aggressive.“Enterprises wish to innovate sooner, transfer with confidence, and construct the fitting basis for AI, with out sinking time and assets into advanced infrastructure. In any other case, they’ll fall behind,” stated Yossi Reitblat, Ryft’s co-founder and CEO.
“Ryft makes it doable for any firm to personal, govern, and optimize their knowledge with the identical ease they’ve come to count on from exterior distributors, solely now, it’s absolutely of their arms,” added Reitblat.
Apache Iceberg has been gaining floor quick, not simply as a technical format however as a sign of the place enterprise knowledge technique is heading. Firms are more and more rethinking whether or not it is smart to construct round closed methods when open requirements can provide extra management and adaptability. Whereas main cloud suppliers have began to supply Iceberg compatibility, they typically achieve this throughout the limits of their very own ecosystems.
Ryft takes a distinct strategy. Iceberg just isn’t one thing the platform merely helps. It’s the basis. That target openness might matter as extra corporations attempt to construct knowledge methods that may evolve, scale, and help the AI instruments they wish to use.
Whereas Ryft has solely emerged from stealth, it has been dwell within the subject. It’s being utilized by prospects in finance, e-commerce, adtech, gaming, and cybersecurity. These early deployments recommend that Ryft’s promise of management with out complexity is resonating with shoppers who work with knowledge methods that should be quick, compliant, and extremely dependable.
That target simplicity, management, and AI readiness has resonated with traders as properly, particularly these carefully watching how enterprise knowledge infrastructure is evolving.“Ryft is tackling one of many hardest challenges in knowledge infrastructure right now, giving groups management over their knowledge with out sacrificing ease of use,” stated Juriaan Duizendstraal, accomplice at Index Ventures.
“By constructing on Apache Iceberg, they’ve created a platform that eliminates vendor lock-in, simplifies knowledge stacks, and permits AI adoption for enterprises.”
For Duizendstraal and his workforce, it wasn’t simply the know-how that stood out—it was the folks behind it. “From our first assembly, the workforce’s vitality, readability of thought, and ambition stood out,” he stated. “Yossi, Yuval, and Man are usually not simply constructing an organization; they’re shaping a complete class. It’s no surprise they’re attracting distinctive expertise.”
Ryft was based by Yossi Reitblat, Yuval Yogev, and Man Gadon, who’ve labored collectively on technical initiatives for a number of years. Their background spans infrastructure, safety, and knowledge methods, they usually convey a sensible understanding of what slows groups down when coping with fashionable knowledge structure. That perspective has formed most of the early choices behind the platform.
With contemporary funding in hand, the workforce is now targeted on constructing momentum. That features hiring extra engineers, rising its go-to-market operation, and forging new partnerships. As curiosity in Iceberg continues to rise and enterprises search for alternate options to proprietary cloud stacks, Ryft is betting that timing is on its facet.
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