Ryft Raises $8M to Help Enterprises Take Control Over Their Data
QUICK TAKE
- Ryft is a pioneering cloud data management platform built for Apache Iceberg that gives enterprises complete control over their data.
- In the age of AI, Ryft provides data teams with the agile, adaptable, and fully flexible infrastructure enterprises need to stay ahead.
- Ryft has raised $8 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures and joined by Bessemer Venture Partners and members of the founding teams at Wiz and Eon, as well as executives from Confluent.
- The company was founded by former elite Israeli intelligence officers Yossi Reitblat (CEO), Yuval Yogev (CTO), and Guy Gadon (VP R&D).
INDEX PERSPECTIVE
At the core of our investment in Ryft is an extraordinary founding team. I had the privilege of spending significant time with Yossi, Yuval, and Guy over many months – through countless meetings, lunches, dinners, and deep conversations. With every interaction, their energy, clarity of thought, and ambition stood out. The more time I spent with them, the more convinced I became: they weren’t just building a company; they were going to shape an entire category. In truth, I knew I wanted to back them from our very first meeting.
During our early conversations a year ago, the team had an instinct, then unproven, that Apache Iceberg would be a fast-growing technology adopted by forward-thinking data experts. Today, that belief is proving well-placed, with the technology increasingly taking center stage among leading tech companies such as Apple, Netflix, Airbnb, and LinkedIn, and new companies including Bloomberg, Slack and Booking.com also adopting Iceberg.
Amid this, Ryft has successfully positioned itself as the go-to team and resource for anyone considering a switch to Iceberg. The founders are already seen as key authorities in the space, with a community growing around them.
It’s meant they’ve been able to scoop up the best talent out there, consistently beating out bigger competitors with more funding and company-building experience – a testament to the draw that these founders hold. Friends since high school, their connection is palpable. They have complete trust in one another and laser-sharp definitions of who makes what decisions.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, as Yossi, Yuval, and Guy have long had a great reputation. They served in the most technical subunit of 8200, the elite intelligence department of the IDF. Within that department, they were in the top percentile, having overhauled the IDF’s legacy data infrastructure into its current modern data stack, which they built from scratch. It’s made them natural leaders that talent flocks to, and I can’t wait to see what they achieve next.
THE DETAILS
For years, cloud giants like Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, and Google have made billions by offering enterprises an easy way to store and analyze data – provided that the data stayed within their platforms. But that convenience came at a hidden cost: soaring expenses, rigid infrastructure, and deep vendor lock-in that slowed innovation and made AI adoption harder. Still, many companies remain stuck in outdated systems, deterred by the complexity of managing their data independently.
Ryft is changing the game by giving enterprises full control of their data, without the burden of managing it themselves.
In the age of AI, data isn’t just a resource; it’s the engine of innovation, speed, and competitive advantage. To stay ahead, enterprises need infrastructure that’s as dynamic as the systems they’re building: agile, adaptable, and fully under their control.
Ryft offers a fully managed data platform, built for Apache Iceberg (the open-source standard for modern data lakes), without compromising ownership or flexibility. Ryft takes care of the hardest parts of owning data for companies: optimization, compliance, disaster recovery, and governance, so teams can focus on building, not babysitting infrastructure.
“Enterprises want to innovate faster, move with confidence, and build the right foundation for AI, without sinking time and resources into complex infrastructure. Otherwise, they’ll fall behind,” said Yossi Reitblat, Ryft’s co-founder and CEO. “Ryft makes it possible for any company to own, govern, and optimize their data with the same ease they’ve come to expect from external vendors, only now, it’s fully in their hands.”
The $8 million seed round was led by Index, joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from members of the founding teams at Wiz, as well as executives from Zscaler, Crowdstrike, Confluent, and Cisco. The new funding will be used to grow the engineering team, scale GTM efforts, and build new partnerships.
Published — July 9, 2025
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