# Sri Ambati

> Sri Satish Ambati is the CEO and Co-founder of H2O.ai, the company behind the world's most widely used open-source machine learning platform. Since founding H2O.ai in 2012 with a mission to 'democratize AI for anyone, anywhere,' he has built it into a $1.7B enterprise AI platform serving over 20,000 organizations including more than half the Fortune 500. A serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded Platfora (acquired by Workday), Sri bridges academic neuroscience research - via sabbaticals at Stanford and UC Berkeley - with industrial-scale AI deployment. Under his leadership H2O.ai has advanced from AutoML pioneer to generative AI powerhouse, with h2oGPTe ranked #1 on the GAIA leaderboard and the company recognized as a Visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-founder at H2O.ai
- **Organizations:** H2O.ai, Platfora (acquired by Workday), DataStax, Azul Systems
- **From:** India
- **Nationality:** Indian-American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science, SRKR Engineering College, Master of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Memphis, Sabbatical Research in Theoretical Neuroscience, Stanford University, Sabbatical Research in Theoretical Neuroscience, UC Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded H2O.ai in 2012, growing it to serve 20,000+ organizations including 50%+ of Fortune 500, Built H2O open-source ML library used by millions of data scientists worldwide, Raised $246M+ in funding, achieving $1.7B valuation

## Career timeline

- **1998** — Graduated from SRKR Engineering College with B.Tech in Computer Science
- **2000** — Completed M.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Memphis
- **2000s** — Sabbatical research in Theoretical Neuroscience at Stanford University and UC Berkeley
- **2000s** — Director of Engineering at Azul Systems (JVM technology company)
- **2000s** — Director of Engineering at DataStax (distributed database company)
- **2011** — Co-founded Platfora, a big data analytics company
- **2012** — Founded H2O.ai with mission to democratize AI for anyone, anywhere
- **2014** — Platfora acquired by Workday
- **2017** — H2O.ai raises Series C funding; H2O open-source ML library reaches millions of users
- **2019** — Named Datanami Person to Watch; H2O Driverless AI gains enterprise traction
- **2021** — Led o2forindia.org humanitarian oxygen campaign during COVID Delta wave in India; H2O.ai raises $100M Series E
- **2022** — Keynote at Web Summit; H2O.ai expands into generative AI with h2oGPT
- **2023** — Launched h2oGPTe, enterprise generative AI platform; open-sourced multiple LLMs
- **2024** — H2O.ai reaches $1.7B valuation; released H2OVL-Mississippi and H2O-Danube3 models; keynote at GenAI World NY
- **2025** — h2oGPTe ranked #1 on GAIA leaderboard; H2O AI Super Agent #1 on FutureX leaderboard; Gartner Magic Quadrant Visionary
- **2026** — Unveiled tabH2O foundation model for tabular data at Dell Technologies World; H2O.ai achieves FedRAMP High authorization

## Achievements

- Co-founded H2O.ai in 2012, growing it to serve 20,000+ organizations including 50%+ of Fortune 500
- Built H2O open-source ML library used by millions of data scientists worldwide
- Raised $246M+ in funding, achieving $1.7B valuation
- h2oGPTe ranked #1 on GAIA (General AI Assistants) leaderboard (2025)
- H2O AI Super Agent ranked #1 on FutureX leaderboard, outperforming OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek (2025)
- Recognized as Visionary in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services (2025)
- Achieved FedRAMP High authorization for H2O.ai platform (2026)
- Named Datanami Person to Watch (2019)
- Led o2forindia.org campaign: distributed 300+ oxygen concentrators to 200+ public health organizations across India during COVID-19 Delta wave
- Co-founded Platfora, acquired by Workday
- Featured in Wall Street Journal, CNBC, World Economic Forum publications
- Launched tabH2O - enterprise foundation model for tabular data (2026)

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Unveiled tabH2O at Dell Technologies World - an enterprise foundation model for tabular data enabling single API call predictions; H2O.ai achieves FedRAMP High authorization
- **2025-12** — H2O AI Super Agent ranked #1 on FutureX leaderboard, outperforming OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek
- **2025-08** — h2oGPTe ranked #1 on GAIA (General AI Assistants) leaderboard; H2O.ai named Visionary in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services
- **2024-07** — Released H2O-Danube3 series of small, efficient language models optimized for on-device deployment
- **2024-04** — Released H2OVL-Mississippi vision-language models for privacy-focused, on-device applications
- **2024-01** — H2O.ai reaches $1.7B valuation; keynote appearances at GenAI World NY and Ai4 conferences

## Links

- Website: https://h2o.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srisatishambati/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/srisatish
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muu3yv9-wR8
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/pages/H2Oai/667149513416696

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sri-ambati
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-22