# Aaron Katz

> Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, the world's fastest OLAP database company, which he has built from a 12-person open-source project into a $15 billion enterprise serving 4,000 customers including Tesla, Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI. A veteran of Salesforce (12 years, from $20M to $4B in revenue) and Elastic (CRO, $5M to $500M), Katz assembled a founding team mid-pandemic, relocated engineers from Russia to Amsterdam, and raised over $1 billion in funding. In January 2026 ClickHouse closed a $400M Series D; by May 2026 the company surpassed $250M ARR, growing 250% year-over-year.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at ClickHouse
- **Organizations:** ClickHouse, Elastic, Salesforce, PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems
- **From:** Mountain View, California, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science, Managerial Economics (minor: English), University of California, Davis
- **Known for:** Co-founded ClickHouse and built it to $15B valuation in five years, Raised over $1 billion in total funding including $400M Series D (January 2026), Grew ClickHouse to $250M ARR with 250% year-over-year growth (May 2026)

## Career timeline

- **1998** — Graduated UC Davis with BS in Managerial Economics; joined Sun Microsystems as intern on JavaStation project
- **1999** — Joined PeopleSoft as consultant, handled Y2K testing in Europe
- **2001** — Dot-com startup failed; briefly unemployed, rejected from business school, worked waiting tables in Tahoe City
- **2002** — Joined Salesforce (~150 employees) in a sales role; impressed Marc Benioff in interview
- **2002-2014** — Rose through Salesforce to Senior VP overseeing enterprise sales and Latin America; held executive roles in Asia Pacific and EMEA; helped scale Salesforce from $20M to $4B ARR
- **2014** — Joined Elastic as Chief Revenue Officer
- **2018** — Witnessed Elastic's IPO at the New York Stock Exchange
- **2014-2020** — As CRO of Elastic, scaled company from $5M to $500M in revenue
- **2021** — Co-founded ClickHouse Inc.; assembled founding team including CTO Alexey Milovidov (original ClickHouse creator) and President Yury Izrailevsky; raised $50M Series A from Index Ventures and Benchmark
- **2021** — Raised $250M Series B at $2B valuation; relocated engineering team from Russia to Amsterdam mid-pandemic
- **2022** — Launched ClickHouse Cloud publicly in December; opened European HQ in Amsterdam
- **2025** — Raised $350M Series C; Forbes Cloud 100 listing; extended Series C with investors including Citi Ventures, Insight Partners, Peak XV Partners; notable angels Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, Kyle Juszczyk
- **2026-01** — Raised $400M Series D led by Dragoneer at $15B valuation
- **2026-05** — ClickHouse surpassed $250M ARR (up 250% YoY) and 4,000 customers; launched Claude-powered ClickHouse Agents and ClickStack Cloud at Open House 2026

## Achievements

- Co-founded ClickHouse and built it to $15B valuation in five years
- Raised over $1 billion in total funding including $400M Series D (January 2026)
- Grew ClickHouse to $250M ARR with 250% year-over-year growth (May 2026)
- Built customer base of 4,000 organizations including Tesla, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, Cloudflare
- Scaled Salesforce from $20M to $4B in annual revenue over 12 years
- Scaled Elastic as CRO from $5M to $500M, guiding the company through its NYSE IPO in 2018
- Relocated founding engineering team from Russia to Amsterdam during the pandemic
- Forbes Cloud 100 listing (2025)
- Launched partnership with Anthropic for Claude-powered database agents

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — ClickHouse Open House 2026 conference (San Francisco): announced $250M ARR, 4,000 customers, launched Claude-powered ClickHouse Agents, ClickStack Cloud for serverless observability, Postgres managed by ClickHouse in beta, and CostBench open benchmark.
- **2026-01** — ClickHouse raised $400M Series D led by Dragoneer at a $15 billion valuation, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, GIC, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.
- **2025-10** — Extended Series C financing with new investors including Citi Ventures, Insight Partners, Peak XV Partners, and notable angel investors from the NFL.
- **2025-07** — Hired Kevin Egan as Chief Revenue Officer (veteran of Atlassian, Slack, Dropbox, and Salesforce).
- **2025-05** — Raised $350M Series C; named to Forbes Cloud 100 list.

## Links

- Website: https://clickhouse.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-katz-5762094
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ceo_clickhouse
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmAaronKatz
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/clickhouseinc/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/aaron-katz
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-27