Iguazio

Iguazio, now a part of McKinsey's AI arm QuantumBlack, provides a sophisticated platform focused on the operationalization of artificial intelligence and machine learning for enterprise clients. Established in 2014 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs—Asaf Somekh (CEO), Yaron Haviv (CTO), Yaron Segev (COO), and Orit Nissan-Messing (VP Architecture)—the company was founded to bridge the critical gap between AI model development and its real-world business application. The founders brought extensive experience from leadership roles at successful tech companies like XtremIO, XIV, Mellanox, and Radvision, creating a strong foundation of expertise in high-performance computing, data storage, and enterprise analytics.

The company's core offering is a comprehensive Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) platform designed to automate and streamline the entire AI lifecycle. This enables organizations to develop, deploy, and manage AI and Generative AI applications with significantly greater speed and efficiency. The platform addresses common industry pain points, such as the high failure rate of AI projects moving from research to production, by providing an integrated environment for data ingestion, model training, deployment, and continuous monitoring. It supports deployment across multi-cloud, on-premises, and edge environments, offering flexibility to its diverse client base. Revenue is generated through the licensing of this platform to enterprises across various sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, and healthcare.

Iguazio’s platform distinguishes itself by unifying the data pipeline and integrating essential tools like Kubeflow, Spark, and TensorFlow, which facilitates the rapid and repeatable rollout of new AI services. Key features include a built-in feature store, serverless functions for automated pipelines, and robust model monitoring capabilities to ensure performance and govern risks associated with generative AI. Before its acquisition by McKinsey in January 2023 for an estimated $50 million, Iguazio had raised approximately $72 million from investors such as Pitango, Verizon Ventures, Samsung, and Dell. The acquisition was a strategic move for McKinsey, which analyzed over 1,000 AI companies before selecting Iguazio to enhance its QuantumBlack division, aiming to make client AI solutions significantly more productive and faster to deploy.

Keywords: MLOps, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science platform, AI operationalization, enterprise AI, generative AI, real-time analytics, AI deployment, model management, feature store, data pipeline automation, cloud native AI, edge computing, QuantumBlack, Asaf Somekh, Yaron Haviv, Yaron Segev, Orit Nissan-Messing, AI infrastructure, predictive maintenance, fraud prediction, real-time recommendations, call center analysis