# Aran Khanna

> Aran Khanna is the co-founder and CEO of Archera, a Bellevue-based startup that helps companies cut cloud bills by guaranteeing deep discounts without locking them into long-term commitments, backed by insurance and reinsurance capacity. A Harvard computer science and math graduate, he first made headlines in 2015 when his Chrome extension Marauder's Map exposed a location-tracking flaw in Facebook Messenger and cost him a Facebook internship. He went on to research privacy at Harvard, build neural-network tools as an AI engineer at AWS, and co-found Archera in 2019 with his brother Nikhil.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Archera
- **Organizations:** Archera, Glia Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Marianas Labs
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.A. Computer Science joint with Mathematics, Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Archera, with 400+ customers and a reported 500% year-over-year revenue run-rate growth, Raised a $17M Series B in 2024 plus access to $100M+ in reinsurance and lending capacity, Created Marauder's Map, downloaded over 85,000 times, prompting Facebook to update Messenger's location sharing

## Career timeline

- **2015** — As a Harvard senior, released Marauder's Map, a Chrome extension exposing a location-tracking flaw in Facebook Messenger; Facebook rescinded his summer internship offer
- **2015** — Published research and the Money Trail tool demonstrating privacy risks in public Venmo data
- **2015-2016** — Research Fellow and Developer at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), studying privacy and security vulnerabilities
- **2016** — Joined Amazon Web Services as an AI Engineer; worked on the early SageMaker team and neural network compression tools, co-authoring papers
- **2018-2019** — Co-founded Glia Intelligence, a machine learning consulting practice for retail replenishment and pricing
- **2019** — Co-founded Archera with his brother Nikhil Khanna
- **2024** — Archera closed a $17M Series B led by HighSage Ventures plus $100M+ in reinsurance and lending capacity

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Archera, with 400+ customers and a reported 500% year-over-year revenue run-rate growth
- Raised a $17M Series B in 2024 plus access to $100M+ in reinsurance and lending capacity
- Created Marauder's Map, downloaded over 85,000 times, prompting Facebook to update Messenger's location sharing
- Authored privacy research on Venmo data exposure and the Money Trail tool
- TED speaker and frequent podcast guest on digital privacy and cloud economics
- AI researcher with published academic papers and patents related to privacy-aware machine learning and model compression

## Latest updates

- **2024-07** — Archera announced a $17M Series B led by HighSage Ventures with Ridge Ventures, Amplify Partners and PSL, plus $100M+ in reinsurance and lending capacity to back insured cloud commitments.

## Links

- Website: http://arankhanna.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aran-khanna/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/arankhanna
- GitHub: https://github.com/arank
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojVAKC_jR5E
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aran.khanna/

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/aran-khanna
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-14