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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 information at scale. Their platforms provide highly effective capabilities out of the field, however in addition 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 effectively. For others, it has raised questions on flexibility and management. Now, a brand new participant has entered the market with a unique method that gives 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 better autonomy over their information infrastructure. Its pitch is easy: make it simply as straightforward to handle your individual information as it’s handy 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 information layer constructed on Apache Iceberg, the main open-source desk format for contemporary information lakes. Iceberg permits organizations to separate storage and compute, allows 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 always retains groups from taking full management of their information. Duties like optimization, governance, compliance, and catastrophe restoration are all managed behind the scenes. The purpose is to let enterprises profit from open structure with out taking up the operational burden that often comes with it.
Credit: Ryft.io
That concentrate on ease and management is what Ryft’s founding staff sees as key to serving to enterprises keep aggressive.“Enterprises wish to innovate quicker, transfer with confidence, and construct the suitable basis for AI, with out sinking time and sources into complicated infrastructure. In any other case, they’ll fall behind,” mentioned Yossi Reitblat, Ryft’s co-founder and CEO.
“Ryft makes it attainable for any firm to personal, govern, and optimize their information with the identical ease they’ve come to anticipate from exterior distributors, solely now, it’s absolutely of their palms,” added Reitblat.
Apache Iceberg has been gaining floor quick, not simply as a technical format however as a sign of the place enterprise information technique is heading. Corporations are more and more rethinking whether or not it is sensible to construct round closed methods when open requirements can provide extra management and suppleness. 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 unique method. Iceberg will not be one thing the platform merely helps. It’s the basis. That concentrate on openness might matter as extra corporations attempt to construct information methods that may evolve, scale, and help the AI instruments they wish to use.
Whereas Ryft has solely emerged from stealth, it has been reside 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 information methods that have to be quick, compliant, and extremely dependable.
That concentrate on simplicity, management, and AI readiness has resonated with buyers as effectively, particularly these intently watching how enterprise information infrastructure is evolving.“Ryft is tackling one of many hardest challenges in information infrastructure as we speak, giving groups management over their information with out sacrificing ease of use,” mentioned Juriaan Duizendstraal, companion at Index Ventures.
“By constructing on Apache Iceberg, they’ve created a platform that eliminates vendor lock-in, simplifies information stacks, and allows AI adoption for enterprises.”
For Duizendstraal and his staff, it wasn’t simply the expertise that stood out—it was the folks behind it. “From our first assembly, the staff’s vitality, readability of thought, and ambition stood out,” he mentioned. “Yossi, Yuval, and Man will not be 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 information methods, they usually deliver a sensible understanding of what slows groups down when coping with trendy information structure. That perspective has formed most of the early choices behind the platform.
With contemporary funding in hand, the staff 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 aspect.
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