Anaconda Unveils AI Incubator and Announces Executive Leadership Revamp

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 31, 2024 — Anaconda Inc. has announced a new AI Incubator and changes to its executive leadership team.

Peter Wang was named Chief AI & Innovation Officer and will lead Anaconda’s new AI Incubator. The AI Incubator will serve as an internal research and development group dedicated to advancing Python performance in AI workloads and supporting the company’s competitive advantage.

In line with Anaconda’s mission to empower the world with the power of AI, data science, and Python, Anaconda’s AI Incubator will work to develop new breakthroughs in open-source Python and AI that will enable the next generation of AI applications and products. More details on Anaconda’s AI Incubator will be released over the coming months. Wang will also continue to guide Anaconda’s growth as a member of its board of directors.

Barry Libert

Barry Libert was named Anaconda’s CEO, after serving on Anaconda’s board of directors for the past four years. As CEO, he will focus on accelerating the Company’s growth as well as the size and scope of its user and developer community. As a serial entrepreneur, Barry comes with over 30 years of board and operating experience focused on creating exponential value through network effects and data in multiple tech sectors.

Alongside Wang’s and Libert’s new roles, the following executive leadership changes will take effect immediately:

• Jessica Reeves will remain Chief Operating Officer with expanded responsibilities focused on the Company’s expanding growth and operational excellence.
• Chandler Vaughn was promoted to Chief Product Officer directing all product marketing, strategy and advancements.
• Rob Futrick was promoted to Chief Technology Officer driving the technology vision and execution for the Company.
• Rebecca Kan was hired in Q4 2023 as EVP, Marketing responsible for all corporate positioning and marketing.
• Jason Hochman was hired in Q4 2023 as EVP, Revenue in charge of all sales activities for the Company.

“These strategic changes, together with the fact that Anaconda is already the development platform of choice for today’s most innovative AI companies, reflect our dominant role in the industry as the OS for AI,” said Anaconda CEO Barry Libert. “We are excited about the amazing foundation we have built at Anaconda. We are ready to capitalize on recent momentum in AI innovation and developments to scale to more than 100 million users and accelerate the speed and development of our AI solutions for the OSS community and market at large as AI continues to grow and change,” said Wang, the firm’s co-founder.

Peter Wang. Photos credit: Anaconda

Anaconda has made multiple investments in AI and Python democratization in the last year, such as Anaconda Assistant, Python in Excel, Edublocks, and PyScript. Alongside these product innovations, Anaconda has developed deep partnerships with organizations like Microsoft, IBM WatsonX, Oracle, Intel, and Snowflake to bring the power of Python to its users.

Through these investments and continued market growth, Anaconda has increased its enterprise customer base by 15x since 2020, and had its largest revenue quarter in history in Q4 2023 while reducing burn by 65%.

Learn more about how Anaconda is empowering the next generation of AI applications here and bringing assistive AI to Python with Anaconda Assistant.

About Anaconda

With more than 45 million users and 250,000 organizations using the platform, Anaconda is the world’s most popular data science platform and the foundation of modern AI development. The Company pioneered the use of Python for data science, championed its vibrant community, and continues to steward open-source projects that make tomorrow’s AI innovations possible. Our enterprise-grade and workstation solutions enable corporate, research, and academic institutions around the world to harness the power of open-source for competitive advantage, groundbreaking research, and a better world.

Source: Anaconda