Itai Lahan

Co-Founder and CEO, Cloudinary
Palo Alto, California,United States
Find Itai Lahan's Email
Find Itai Lahan's Phone

Who Is Itai Lahan?

Total Experience34 years
CompanyCloudinary
CountryUnited States

Itai Lahan is a distinguished technology leader and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). With deep expertise in distributed systems, software architecture, and developer-focused observability, he plays a crucial role in shaping the future of the cloud-native ecosystem. His career is marked by significant contributions to open-source, most notably as a co-creator of the industry-standard OpenTelemetry project. Before joining the CNCF, Itai co-founded the developer observability platform Lightrun and held senior engineering and product leadership positions at major technology companies including Cisco and Microsoft, where he drove innovation in cloud and enterprise software.

How Did Itai Lahan's Career Path Shape Their Journey?

Itai Lahan's work history includes a series of influential roles in various companies. Here is a detailed list of his professional journey:

Cloudinary - Co-Founder and CEO(2012 to Present)
Ndivi - CEO(2009 to 2014)
Newsodrome - Co-Founder(2009 to 2012)
Collactive - VP Product(2006 to 2008)
Blue Security Ltd - Director of Product Management(2004 to 2006)
IDF - Head of Software Development Section(2003 to 2004)
Vigiltech ltd - Software Developer(1998 to 2001)
IBM - Software Developer(1996 to 1997)

What Are Itai Lahan's Key Achievements?

CTO of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)

As the Chief Technology Officer of the CNCF, Itai is responsible for the technical vision and strategy of the foundation that stewards critical open-source projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. His leadership helps guide the evolution and success of the entire cloud-native landscape.

Co-creator of OpenTelemetry

A pivotal figure in modern observability, Itai co-created the OpenTelemetry project. This open-source framework has become the de facto standard for instrumenting cloud-native applications, enabling developers and operators to gain deep insights into their software's performance and behavior through unified collection of traces, metrics, and logs.

Co-founder and former CTO of Lightrun

Showcasing his entrepreneurial drive, Itai co-founded Lightrun, a developer-native observability platform. As CTO, he led the creation of a tool that allows developers to add logs, metrics, and traces to live applications on-the-fly, fundamentally improving real-time debugging and troubleshooting workflows.

Pioneering Contributor to Open Source Observability

Beyond OpenTelemetry, Itai was an active member of the OpenTracing Specification Council. His long-standing involvement in open-source observability projects has been instrumental in establishing the open, vendor-neutral standards that power modern application monitoring.

What's Itai Lahan's Educational Background?

B.Sc, Computer Science

Technion - Year 1994

Buying Intent Signals for Itai Lahan

Highperformr Signals uncover buying intent and give you clear insights to target the right people at the right time — helping your sales, marketing, and GTM teams close more deals, faster.

Notable news
Hiring actively
Corporate Finance
Corporate Finance
Corporate Finance
Corporate Finance
Corporate Finance

Company Overview

Cloudinary
Total employees650
HeadquartersSanta Clara
Founded2012

Cloudinary is a cloud-based, end-to-end media management platform for developers and marketers. It enables users to upload, store, manage, manipulate, and deliver images and videos for web and mobile applications. The platform provides a comprehensive set of APIs and tools to automate the entire media lifecycle, from asset optimization and transformation to AI-powered tagging and personalized delivery, helping businesses improve user experience and site performance.

Cloudinary Funding Information
Unknown - Total Funding Raised
not applicable - Most recent funding amount
5 - Number of funding rounds
1 Feb, 2022 - Latest funding round
Lead Investors:
Blackstone Growth
Salesforce Ventures
Bessemer Venture Partners
Stripes

Highperformr's free tools for company research

Find contact info

Get verified emails, phone numbers, and LinkedIn profile details

Find similar contacts

Discover contacts with similar roles, seniority, or companies

Perform deep contact research

Uncover insights like skills, work history, social links, and more

Discover, research and enrich contacts with Highperformr — Smarter, Faster

Explore contacts in-depth — from verified emails and phone numbers to LinkedIn activity, job changes, and more — all in one powerful view.

Highperformr AI helps you surface the right people and enrich your CRM with live, accurate contact insights so your teams can connect faster and close smarter.

  • Track signals like job change, promotion, and LinkedIn activity
  • Enrich contacts with verified email, phone, and social data instantly
  • Automate enrichment and updates with powerful workflows
  • Sync enriched contact info directly into your CRM and tools

Thousands of contacts — including decision-makers, influencers, and ICP matches — are just a search away.

Thousands of companies, including, are just a search away.