# David Aronchick

> David Aronchick is the co-founder and CEO of Expanso, the Seattle company commercializing Bacalhau, an open-source platform that moves computation to where data already lives instead of hauling data to the cloud. A 4x founder, he helped launch Google Kubernetes Engine, co-founded the Kubeflow machine learning project, led open source ML strategy at Microsoft Azure, and ran Compute over Data at Protocol Labs. His through-line is a stubborn belief that technology is not neutral and that distributed systems should make computing cheaper, more private, and more useful at the edge.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Expanso
- **Organizations:** Expanso, Bacalhau Project, Protocol Labs, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Chef, Kubeflow, Hark, MTS, Formatta
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Undergraduate degrees in psychology and chemistry, Dartmouth College
- **Known for:** Co-founded four startups (Expanso, Hark, MTS, Formatta), Launched Google Kubernetes Engine, a foundational managed Kubernetes service, Co-founded Kubeflow, a widely used open-source ML toolkit for Kubernetes

## Career timeline

- **2001-2007** — Microsoft - program management on Exchange, Internet Explorer security, Linux/OSS strategy, and Microsoft Research
- **2007** — Founded Hark, a Seattle audio-clip sharing startup
- **2015** — Joined Google's Kubernetes team; led product management and launched Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
- **2017** — Co-founded the Kubeflow project and the SAME project for machine learning workflows
- **2019** — Returned to Microsoft as head of Open Source Machine Learning Strategy at Azure
- **2021** — Joined Protocol Labs, leading Compute over Data research and development
- **2022** — Co-founded Bacalhau, an open-source distributed computation platform
- **2023** — Named co-founder and CEO of Expanso to commercialize Bacalhau
- **2024** — Raised $7.5M seed round for Expanso

## Achievements

- Co-founded four startups (Expanso, Hark, MTS, Formatta)
- Launched Google Kubernetes Engine, a foundational managed Kubernetes service
- Co-founded Kubeflow, a widely used open-source ML toolkit for Kubernetes
- Led Open Source Machine Learning Strategy at Microsoft Azure
- Led Compute over Data at Protocol Labs
- Raised $7.5M seed funding for Expanso

## Latest updates

- **2025-04** — Discussed Bacalhau's compute-over-data, edge privacy and cost savings on the Open at Intel podcast as part of Intel Liftoff.
- **2024-05** — Expanso closed a $7.5M seed round to expand its distributed data platform.

## Links

- Website: https://www.davidaronchick.com/
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/aronchick
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aronchick
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj3n0uvQSCM

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/david-aronchick
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-24