CData Appoints Raviv Levi as Chief Product and Technology Officer, Expands Executive Team to Power the AI Data Layer
CData Software, widely recognized as the data layer for AI, has announced the appointment of Raviv Levi as its new Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO). Alongside this hire, the company is also welcoming Amit Naik as Vice President of AI Architecture and Craig Sanchez as Senior Vice President of Embedded Sales — a sweeping expansion of its executive team as enterprise demand for AI-native data access accelerates.
The appointments come at an inflection point for enterprise AI adoption. Organizations are no longer merely experimenting with large language models; they are actively deploying conversational AI tools that query live enterprise data and building autonomous agents that take action across complex, multi-system environments. CData's platform — offering live connectivity and data replication across more than 350 enterprise sources — is positioned at the center of this transformation.
Raviv Levi brings a proven track record of building and scaling enterprise technology platforms. He joins from Sift, where he served as Chief Product and Technology Officer, and previously held senior roles at Cisco, including Vice President of Security Strategy and Innovation for Cisco's Security Business Group, where he led product, cloud security, and platform initiatives at enterprise scale.
"For years, enterprises focused on moving data for analytics. AI changes the equation. People are already using conversational AI to ask questions of their enterprise data, and autonomous agents are starting to take action on it. Both need live, governed, context-aware access to data wherever it lives."
— Amit Sharma, Founder and CEO, CData Software
Why Raviv Levi for the CPTO Role
Raviv Levi's selection as CPTO reflects CData's strategic focus on the AI data layer opportunity. At Sift, Levi oversaw product and technology strategy for an AI-powered trust and safety platform used at enterprise scale — experience that maps directly to CData's challenge of making complex, distributed enterprise data accessible, contextual, and governable for AI systems. His Cisco background in security strategy adds a layer of credibility in regulated industries where auditability and controlled access are prerequisites for any AI deployment.
Raviv Levi — Chief Product and Technology Officer
Raviv Levi will oversee CData's product and technology strategy, driving the next phase of growth as the company expands its AI-focused data connectivity platform. He joins from Sift (CPTO) and previously held VP-level roles at Cisco focused on enterprise security, cloud infrastructure, and AI-driven technologies.
Amit Naik — Vice President of AI Architecture
Naik will lead the design and evolution of CData's AI architecture, ensuring the platform meets the technical demands of enterprise AI deployments at scale. He joins from Calix and brings deep AI/ML leadership experience from PayPal, Financial Engines, and Oracle.
Craig Sanchez — Senior Vice President of Embedded Sales
Sanchez will lead CData's embedded sales organization, helping software vendors integrate enterprise-grade connectivity and AI data access directly into their products. He joins from Vectara, with prior senior roles at Elastic and Cloudera.
"The world has changed. In enterprise AI, the model layer is moving fast and orchestration is moving fast, but responsible access to data, with live connectivity, controls, and context, is quickly becoming the bottleneck for enterprises. That's where CData already has a strong foundation, and that opportunity is exactly why I joined."
— Raviv Levi, Chief Product and Technology Officer, CData Software
CData's AI Data Layer Platform
CData's platform delivers three core capabilities that define the AI data layer: live connectivity and data replication across 350+ enterprise sources spanning SaaS applications, cloud platforms, and on-premises systems; semantic intelligence that ensures AI responses are contextually grounded rather than generic; and built-in governance controls that manage every AI-to-data interaction for auditability and compliance. Notably, CData's Connect AI platform is the industry's first fully managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform, integrating with Anthropic Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, and Agent 365. Its customer base spans global enterprises including Adobe, Office Depot, GSK, UiPath, and Palantir.
These appointments represent a clear statement of intent from CData: the company is moving aggressively to establish itself as the definitive data infrastructure layer for enterprise AI — the connective tissue between frontier AI models and the fragmented, sensitive, governance-bound data stores that enterprises actually rely on. With Raviv Levi's enterprise technology pedigree driving product and technology direction, CData is well-positioned to capitalize on what its CEO describes as a fundamental shift in how organizations think about data — not as something to move and store, but as something AI must access live, with full context, in real time.
As the race to build production-ready enterprise AI intensifies, the companies that solve the data access challenge — rather than the model challenge — may prove to be the most enduring winners of the AI era. To learn more about CData's platform and its AI data layer capabilities, visit www.cdata.com.