# Ameesh Divatia

> Ameesh Divatia is the co-founder and CEO of Baffle, a Santa Clara data-protection company that encrypts sensitive information at the field level while preserving its usefulness. An engineer who grew up in India and earned a master's degree at UC Irvine, he previously founded or led PipeLinks, Aarohi Communications, and Lightwire through acquisitions, then spent time as a seed investor before returning to company building. His career is organized around what he calls cross-leverage: carrying a useful idea from one technical market into another that is ready to change.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Baffle, Inc.
- **Organizations:** Baffle, Inc., Carta Ventures, Lightwire, Inc., Artiman Ventures, Emulex Corporation, Aarohi Communications, Inc., Cisco Systems, PipeLinks, Inc., 3Com, Allied Telesyn, Advanced Micro Devices
- **Education:** M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics, M.S. University of Baroda
- **Known for:** Founded or led three companies - PipeLinks, Aarohi Communications, and Lightwire - through acquisitions with announced transaction values totaling more than $425 million., Co-founded Baffle in 2015 and led it through more than $35 million in disclosed funding., Helped Baffle reach more than 100 billion protected records worldwide, according to the company.

## Career timeline

- **1989-1996** — Worked in networking and product roles at Advanced Micro Devices, Allied Telesyn, and 3Com before starting his first company.
- **1996** — Founded PipeLinks and served as chief technology officer, applying data-networking ideas to optical networking.
- **1998-1999** — Cisco agreed to acquire PipeLinks for approximately $126 million in stock; Divatia joined Cisco and became chief product strategist for its optical transport business.
- **2001** — Founded Aarohi Communications and led the storage-networking company as president and CEO.
- **2006** — Emulex acquired Aarohi in a transaction valued at up to approximately $39 million; Divatia became senior vice president and general manager of intelligent network products.
- **2008-2009** — Served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Artiman Ventures, then took an operating role at Lightwire.
- **2009-2012** — Led Lightwire, a silicon-photonics company, from technology development toward product development.
- **2012** — Cisco acquired Lightwire for $271 million.
- **2012-2015** — Co-founded Carta Ventures, a seed-stage fund that invested in eight companies.
- **2015-present** — Co-founded Baffle and serves as CEO, developing no-code, data-centric protection for cloud data.
- **2021** — Baffle announced a $20 million Series B led by Celesta Capital.
- **2022** — Was named as an inventor on U.S. Patent 11,424,909 for protecting data exported to an external entity.

## Achievements

- Founded or led three companies - PipeLinks, Aarohi Communications, and Lightwire - through acquisitions with announced transaction values totaling more than $425 million.
- Co-founded Baffle in 2015 and led it through more than $35 million in disclosed funding.
- Helped Baffle reach more than 100 billion protected records worldwide, according to the company.
- Co-founded seed-stage investor Carta Ventures; Divatia said six of its eight portfolio companies had been acquired by September 2024.
- Named inventor on U.S. Patent 11,424,909, granted in 2022.
- Led Baffle's collaboration with IBM on a data security broker for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Demonstrated Baffle's record-level encryption and encrypted-query capabilities in a CIO video episode.
- **2024-12** — Baffle was named an InfoWorld 2024 Technology of the Year winner in data management and governance.
- **2024-10** — Discussed privacy-enhanced computation and security for generative AI in a Unite.AI interview.
- **2024-09** — Appeared on the Startup Project podcast to discuss three prior exits, founder lessons, data security, and AI.
- **2024-09** — Baffle announced the ability to encrypt data automatically before it is stored in Amazon S3.

## Links

- Website: https://baffle.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameeshd
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/baffleio
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/baffleio

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ameesh-divatia
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-17