Tagged: confluent
6 resultsJay Chen
Jay Chen is the interim CEO of Contextual AI, the Silicon Valley enterprise company building a 'context layer' for grounded AI agents. He stepped into the top job in 2026 after co-founder Douwe Kiela and a group of researchers moved to Google DeepMind under a licensing deal. A Wharton MBA who started as a chip engineer at NVIDIA, Chen built his career across product marketing and growth roles at Confluent, Starburst, Opendoor and Twingate before joining Contextual AI as VP of Marketing, where he helped launch its enterprise RAG platform.
Shiva Suri
Shiva Suri is the founder and CEO of New Lantern, a San Francisco startup building an AI-native radiology platform that aims to automate roughly 90% of imaging workflows - dictation, report drafting, measurements, and worklist navigation. A University of Pennsylvania computer engineer and former Confluent software engineer, he started the company in 2021 after watching his radiologist mother burn most of her day on clerical busywork instead of reading scans. In November 2024 New Lantern raised a $19M Series A led by Benchmark's Eric Vishria, part of $22.6M total raised.
Jay Kreps
Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the data-streaming company built around Apache Kafka, the open-source platform he co-created at LinkedIn in 2010. In December 2025, IBM announced a deal to acquire Confluent for roughly $11 billion. He also serves on Anthropic's Board of Directors and wrote the book I Heart Logs.
Shravan Narayen
Shravan Narayen is a General Partner at IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), one of Silicon Valley's most storied late-stage venture capital firms. Promoted to General Partner in May 2026, he focuses on enterprise infrastructure and AI applications, backing technically sophisticated founders building products that make hard things simple. A former product manager at Snowflake, Confluent, and C3.AI, he brings rare operator depth to IVP's growth-stage portfolio. He holds degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Business School, runs a Substack newsletter on venture and product, and describes himself as a 'hyper-caffeinated new dad' fueled by homemade chai.
Vinod Devan
Vinod Devan is a senior technology executive and strategic operator who has built partner ecosystems and commercial organizations at the intersection of enterprise AI, SaaS, and consulting. With a career spanning Strategy&, Deloitte, Confluent (through its 2021 IPO), Globality, Cohere, and most recently Ema Unlimited as Chief Commercial Officer, Devan brings a rare combination of engineering depth, management consulting rigor, and hands-on go-to-market execution to high-growth AI companies.
Eric Vishria
Eric Vishria is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley's most selective venture firms, where he has led investments in companies like Confluent, Cerebras Systems, Benchling, and Amplitude. Before venture, he co-founded RockMelt (acquired by Yahoo in 2013) and spent years at Loudcloud/Opsware through its $1.65B HP acquisition - an experience he describes as a graduate education in startup warfare. Known for his 'slope over starting point' framework for evaluating founders and his early warnings about AI capital implosion, Vishria brings rare operator depth to a firm built on equal-economics, no-hierarchy partnerships.