Ryft Raises $8M to Help Companies Manage Their Own Data Without Relying on Vendors

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Over the past decade, companies like Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, and Google have made it easier for enterprises to store, process, and analyze data at scale. Their platforms offer powerful capabilities out of the box, but they also come with trade-offs. Most notably, the need to operate within a single vendor’s ecosystem.

For many organizations, that model has worked well. For others, it has raised questions about flexibility and control. Now, a new player has entered the market with a different approach that offers a fully managed experience without locking customers into a proprietary stack.

Ryft, a Tel Aviv–based startup, has just emerged from stealth with $8 million in seed funding and a platform focused on giving enterprises greater autonomy over their data infrastructure. Its pitch is simple: make it just as easy to manage your own data as it is to hand it off to a vendor.

The seed funding was 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 Zscaler, Crowdstrike, Confluent, and Cisco.

At the heart of Ryft’s platform is a managed data layer built on Apache Iceberg, the leading open-source table format for modern data lakes. Iceberg allows organizations to separate storage and compute, enables features like time travel and roll back, and avoids the constraints of vendor-specific architectures. It has become the preferred foundation for companies looking to scale while maintaining flexibility and openness.

Ryft builds on that foundation by handling the day-to-day complexity that often keeps teams from taking full control of their data. Tasks like optimization, governance, compliance, and disaster recovery are all managed behind the scenes. The goal is to let enterprises benefit from open architecture without taking on the operational burden that usually comes with it.

Credits: Ryft.io

That focus on ease and control is what Ryft’s founding team sees as key to helping enterprises stay competitive.“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,” added Reitblat. 

Apache Iceberg has been gaining ground fast, not just as a technical format but as a signal of where enterprise data strategy is heading. Companies are increasingly rethinking whether it makes sense to build around closed systems when open standards can offer more control and flexibility. While major cloud providers have started to offer Iceberg compatibility, they often do so within the limits of their own ecosystems.

Ryft takes a different approach. Iceberg is not something the platform simply supports. It is the foundation. That focus on openness may matter as more companies try to build data systems that can evolve, scale, and support the AI tools they want to use.

While Ryft has only emerged from stealth, it has been live in the field. It is being used by customers in finance, e-commerce, adtech, gaming, and cybersecurity. These early deployments suggest that Ryft’s promise of control without complexity is resonating with clients who work with data systems that need to be fast, compliant, and highly reliable.

That focus on simplicity, control, and AI readiness has resonated with investors as well, especially those closely watching how enterprise data infrastructure is evolving.“Ryft is tackling one of the toughest challenges in data infrastructure today, giving teams control over their data without sacrificing ease of use,” said Juriaan Duizendstraal, partner at Index Ventures.

“By building on Apache Iceberg, they’ve created a platform that eliminates vendor lock-in, simplifies data stacks, and enables AI adoption for enterprises.”

For Duizendstraal and his team, it wasn’t just the technology that stood out—it was the people behind it. “From our first meeting, the team’s energy, clarity of thought, and ambition stood out,” he said. “Yossi, Yuval, and Guy are not just building a company; they’re shaping an entire category. It’s no wonder they’re attracting exceptional talent.”

Ryft was founded by Yossi Reitblat, Yuval Yogev, and Guy Gadon, who have worked together on technical projects for several years. Their background spans infrastructure, security, and data systems, and they bring a practical understanding of what slows teams down when dealing with modern data architecture. That perspective has shaped many of the early decisions behind the platform.

With fresh funding in hand, the team is now focused on building momentum. That includes hiring more engineers, growing its go-to-market operation, and forging new partnerships. As interest in Iceberg continues to rise and enterprises look for alternatives to proprietary cloud stacks, Ryft is betting that timing is on its side.

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