SambaNova Boosts Leadership Team with Duo of Industry Veterans — Former AWS Managing Director and Google Cloud VP Bring Expanded Expertise

SambaNova Systems, the company first to market with pre-trained foundation models that underpin generative AI, announces the appointment of Richard Halkett as Chief Revenue Officer and Danner Stodolsky as SVP of Cloud. These strategic leadership additions come during a critical moment for generative AI.

Halkett and Stodolsky bring a wealth of experience in innovation, transformation, and secure cloud services and will be instrumental in driving the company’s strategic growth. Halkett is tasked with leading the sales, sales operations, revenue operations, customer engineering, and marketing teams while Stodolsky will focus on SambaNova’s cloud strategy.

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“We’re thrilled to have Richard and Danner join our team; they will be instrumental in unlocking new markets and enterprise applications for generative AI,” said Rodrigo Liang, CEO of SambaNova Systems. “Richard’s expertise across sales, business strategy, and policy is unparalleled. His deep understanding of digital innovation will be invaluable as we continue to expand our reach. Danner’s engineering expertise from his many years at Google will help advance our cloud strategy globally.”

Halkett previously spent almost six years at Amazon Web Services (AWS), as the Managing Director and WW Lead for Innovation & Transformation Programs. Before joining AWS, he was the Global Director for Digital Capabilities at Cisco, where he built the company’s first sales teams dedicated to software, data, and analytics. Halkett brings extensive experience working in the US and internationally in both startup and enterprise technology in the public and private sectors. Previously, he was Executive Director of NESTA’s Policy & Research Unit, as well as Assistant Director of Studies at The Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

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“I’m delighted to join one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the enterprise arena,” said Halkett. “SambaNova’s platform is state-of-the-art and delivers the most accurate generative AI models. I look forward to working with clients to help them unlock the full potential of AI.”

Stodolsky joins SambaNova after over eleven years at Google, where he served as VP of Engineering for YouTube, Google Cloud Platform, and Ads Privacy. As a founder of the early search engine Lycos, and serving at Akamai Technologies, Quantum, and Verity, Stodolsky’s three decades of experience will provide SambaNova with unparalleled experience and insight.

“Cloud is the consumption method of choice for leading enterprises,” said Stodolsky. “We’ve entered the next generation of AI and its impact will be tremendous. SambaNova is doing things with AI that no other company has accomplished, and I can’t wait to dig in!”

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