Matillion, the Manchester-based AI data automation company, has appointed of veteran enterprise data executive Girish Pancha as chief executive officer and distinguished technology leader Sanjay Krishnamurthi as chief development officer, strengthening the leadership team behind Maia as enterprise demand for AI Data Automation accelerates.
Together, Pancha and Krishnamurthi will accelerate Maia’s product, engineering and go-to-market execution as Matillion expands its leadership in AI Data Automation and deepens its presence in Silicon Valley.
Pancha has spent more than two decades building category-defining enterprise data products and companies. Earlier in his career at Oracle, he led development of Oracle Discoverer, one of the company’s pioneering business intelligence platforms. He later served as chief product officer at Informatica before founding and leading StreamSets as CEO, building it into a leader in modern data integration before its acquisition by Software AG, and that division’s subsequent sale to IBM.
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“I’ve spent my career in data, and I’ve seen a lot of moments hyped as turning points. This one is real,” Pancha said. “AI has made data the most valuable enterprise asset, but it has also exposed how difficult it is to make data trusted, governed and AI-ready at scale. It’s no longer enough to build ETL pipelines—for the AI era, organisations need trusted, AI-native data products. With Maia, Matillion is defining the AI Data Automation category. My focus is to help our customers move faster, empower our partners to innovate with us, and establish Maia as the trusted platform for AI-native data products.”
Former Matillion CEO Matthew Scullion will remain as an active member of the company’s board of directors and work closely with the new leadership team through the transition: “Building Maia has been the work of the last several years,” Scullion said. “Scaling it into the defining platform for AI Data Automation requires the next phase of leadership. Girish has built category-shaping companies before, and I couldn’t be more excited to see him lead Matillion’s next chapter.”
Alongside Pancha’s appointment, Krishnamurthi joins as chief development officer to lead Matillion’s product and engineering organizations. Krishnamurthi has spent his career building the technologies behind modern enterprise data. As chief technology officer at Informatica, he helped shape the modern data integration market. He later joined Microsoft, where he led the transformation of Azure Data Factory and Microsoft Purview into leading cloud data services. Most recently, as VP of engineering at Google, he led the company’s data integration and governance services and helped pioneer their evolution toward AI-native architectures.
“I’ve spent my career building enterprise data platforms through every major technology transition,” Krishnamurthi said. “Just as AI is transforming software engineering, it is now transforming data engineering. It’s fundamentally changing how enterprise data products are created, governed and continuously evolved. Maia was built for that future, and I’m excited to help build the platform enterprises rely on to create AI-native data products.”
“I backed Girish at StreamSets and watched him build and scale a category leader from the ground up,” said Dharmesh Thakker, general partner at Battery Ventures and a Matillion investor. “The best enterprise technology companies pair market-defining products with leaders who know how to build enduring businesses. Girish and Sanjay have each done that before. Combined with the foundation Matthew and the Matillion team have built with Maia, I believe this is one of the strongest leadership teams in enterprise data today.”
