Rakuten Symphony loses cloud and AI chief – SDxCentral

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Partha Seetala leaves for pastures new
Rakuten Symphony’s chief AI officer and president of Rakuten Cloud has stepped down.
Partha Seetala became Rakuten’s cloud chief after it acquired his startup Robin IO in 2022. Robin IO provided automated deployment of 5G, edge, and enterprise apps on Kubernetes.
Seetala would go on to wear a second hat for Rakuten after becoming Symphony’s chief AI officer in December.
Seetala has yet to reveal his next move, writing in a LinkedIn message that he had decided to step back from his role “to build the next big thing.”
“We built products used daily by millions across four continents, created the largest patent portfolios in the cloud native space, and drove industry-leading [annual recurring revenue and] headcount efficiency. Beyond the technology, I am most proud of the unique culture we created at Robin – built on intensity, ownership, ambition, and trust,” Seetala wrote. “Our customers and partners: thank you for trusting us with your mission-critical infrastructure. For builders, there is no greater satisfaction than seeing their ideas and hard work being used every single day in the real world.”
Seetala’s message also thanked Rakuten Mobile co-CEO and President of Rakuten Symphony Sharad Sriwastawa, and Rakuten Group CEO Mickey Mikitani.
Prior to founding Robin IO, Seetala spent six years at Symantec, joining the security firm in 2009 as technical director before becoming a distinguished engineer in 2012.
Prior to Symantec, he founded an unnamed startup based around a scalable distributed file system protocol. This came after roles at Kazeon Sytems and Veritas Technologies.
“This is the end of one chapter – and the beginning of another,” Seetala wrote on LinkedIn, adding: “Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost!,” which translates as “my friend the film isn’t over yet.”
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