# Anand Kashyap

> Anand Kashyap is the CEO and co-founder of Fortanix, a data security company he started with IIT Kanpur classmate Ambuj Kumar in 2016. Formerly its CTO, he previously worked in security research at Symantec and engineering at Arkin and VMware. His work centers on confidential computing, encryption key management and protecting enterprise data and AI models during processing.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-founder at Fortanix
- **Organizations:** Fortanix, Symantec Research Labs, Arkin, VMware
- **Education:** Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Stony Brook University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Fortanix in 2016 and led it first as CTO and later as CEO., Authored research papers and filed over 25 patents in networking and cloud security, according to his official biography., Presented at Financial Cryptography and BlackHat conferences, according to his Forbes Technology Council profile.

## Career timeline

- **—** — Earned computer science degrees at IIT Kanpur and Stony Brook University.
- **Before 2016** — Worked as a researcher at Symantec Research Labs and developed network visualization software at Arkin and VMware.
- **2016** — Co-founded Fortanix with Ambuj Kumar and served as CTO; Foundation Capital incubated the company in its Menlo Park offices.
- **2022-09** — Fortanix announced a $90 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs; this was company funding, not personal wealth.
- **2022-12** — Fortanix announced Kashyap had taken on the CEO role.
- **2026-10** — As CEO, announced Confidential AI support for CNCF Confidential Containers and discussed runtime model protection in a TFiR interview.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Fortanix in 2016 and led it first as CTO and later as CEO.
- Authored research papers and filed over 25 patents in networking and cloud security, according to his official biography.
- Presented at Financial Cryptography and BlackHat conferences, according to his Forbes Technology Council profile.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Fortanix announced Confidential AI support for CNCF Confidential Containers on October 18; the announcement describes plugins in development.
- **2026-08** — Published an essay on private and sovereign AI deployment at Unite.AI on August 20.
- **2026-02** — Published a Forbes Technology Council article on purpose-built AI infrastructure on February 13.
- **2025-11** — Published an article advocating API-based hardware security module services on November 21.

## Links

- Website: https://www.fortanix.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand-kashyap-4790921/

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/anand-kashyap
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-26