CData Appoints Raviv Levi as Chief Product and Technology Officer, Expands Executive Team to Power the AI Data Layer

Key Takeaways

• Raviv Levi joins CData as CPTO, bringing Cisco and Sift experience
• Amit Naik appointed VP of AI Architecture to steer enterprise AI design
• SVP of Embedded Sales Craig Sanchez targets AI data layer partnerships
• Connect AI platform integrates major LLMs, delivering live, governed data access

Pulse Analysis

Enterprise AI is moving beyond isolated analytics toward continuous, agent‑driven decision‑making. Companies now need a data substrate that can surface up‑to‑date information from SaaS, cloud and on‑premise sources while enforcing governance at every step. CData’s Connect AI platform answers that need by offering a fully managed Model Context Protocol layer that plugs directly into leading large language models such as Anthropic Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry. This live‑connectivity approach eliminates the traditional ETL pipeline, reducing latency and compliance risk for organizations that want conversational assistants or autonomous bots to act on enterprise data in real time.

The new executive team bolsters CData’s ability to scale this proposition. Raviv Levi, formerly CPTO at Sift and a former Cisco security strategist, brings a track record of building enterprise‑grade platforms that can handle massive workloads. Amit Naik, with AI‑focused stints at PayPal and Oracle, will shape the underlying architecture to meet the rigorous performance and security demands of large‑scale AI deployments. Meanwhile, Craig Sanchez’s experience selling embedded solutions at Elastic and Cloudera equips CData to embed its connectivity layer into third‑party software, turning data access into a revenue‑generating feature for partners.

For the broader market, CData’s leadership expansion signals that data‑layer providers are becoming strategic enablers of AI, not just infrastructure vendors. As more organizations deploy autonomous agents that must act across dozens of systems, the need for a governed, context‑aware data fabric will intensify. CData’s focus on embedded sales and AI architecture positions it to capture a sizable share of the emerging AI‑data integration market, challenging rivals that still rely on batch‑oriented pipelines. The company’s customer roster—including Adobe, Office Depot, GSK, UiPath and Palantir—demonstrates early traction that could accelerate as AI adoption deepens across industries.