Matillion appoints Girish Pancha as CEO to drive AI data push
Matillion, the Manchester and San Francisco-based enterprise data company, has named Girish Pancha as its new chief executive officer and Sanjay Krishnamurthi as chief development officer. Both appointments take effect immediately and are intended to accelerate the commercial rollout of Maia, Matillion's AI-native data automation platform. Outgoing chief executive Matthew Scullion will transition to an active board seat and work with the incoming leadership through the handover.
Pancha brings more than two decades of enterprise data experience. He led product development on Oracle Discoverer in the early phase of his career, then served as chief product officer at Informatica before founding StreamSets, a modern data integration company he built and sold to Software AG; that division subsequently passed to IBM. Krishnamurthi's pedigree is similarly deep: he held the chief technology officer role at Informatica, led the development of Azure Data Factory and Microsoft Purview, and most recently served as vice president of engineering at Google, where he oversaw data integration and governance services.
The leadership case
Pancha's opening statement did not shy away from the weight of expectation. "I've seen a lot of moments hyped as turning points. This one is real," he said. "AI has made data the most valuable enterprise asset, but it has also exposed how difficult it is to make data trusted, governed and AI-ready at scale. It's no longer enough to build ETL pipelines, for the AI era, organisations need trusted, AI-native data products."
Dharmesh Thakker, general partner at Battery Ventures and an existing Matillion investor, backed Pancha at StreamSets and described the combined appointment as "one of the strongest leadership teams in enterprise data today." Matillion did not disclose financial terms, updated ARR figures, or a fundraising event alongside the announcement.
Maia is described by the company as a platform powered by autonomous AI agents that build, maintain and evolve data products without manual intervention. Named customers in the release include EDF, Balfour Beatty, St. James' Place and Sophos. The platform is structured around three components: Maia Team (specialised agents), the Maia Context Engine (organisational data intelligence), and Maia Foundation (governed data tooling).
Market context
The AI data integration market is intensifying. Legacy extract-transform-load vendors are repositioning around AI-native pipelines, while hyperscalers continue to embed data integration natively into their cloud stacks. Microsoft's Fabric, Google's Dataplex and Databricks' Unity Catalog are each competing for the governance and data-product layer that Matillion is targeting with Maia. At the same time, a cohort of well-funded startups, including those pursuing agentic data engineering approaches, is entering the category from below.
Matillion's decision to deepen its Silicon Valley presence while retaining its Manchester headquarters reflects a broader pattern among UK-founded enterprise software companies seeking US enterprise sales traction. The dual-headquarter model carries execution risk, but the incoming leadership team's combined tenure at US-listed companies should ease go-to-market navigation.
Regulatory and standards read-across
As Maia handles data at scale for regulated sectors, financial services (St. James' Place) and critical infrastructure (EDF) are already named customers, compliance with the EU AI Act's provisions around high-risk AI systems and the UK's evolving AI governance framework will matter. Agentic systems that autonomously build and modify data pipelines may attract closer regulatory scrutiny as guidance matures. Matillion has emphasised governance as a design principle of the platform, which positions it reasonably well, though no third-party certification has been disclosed.