AI21 Hires ex-Databricks Exec to Lead US Expansion

Israel-based generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM) specialist AI21 Labs has appointed former Databricks / Google exec Pankaj Dugar as Senior Vice President, Go-to-Market, and General Manager of North America. He is based near San Francisco.

Users of the firm's developer platform, AI21 Studio, can build their own generative AI applications and services; while its consumer product Wordtune is an AI-based reading and writing assistant, designed to help understand context and meaning, and enabling its millions of users to refine and generate text or read and summarize text within seconds.

Dugar (pictured) joins after nearly five years at big data firm Databricks, where as VP Product and Data Partnerships he built the product and partnerships organization from the ground up, and was involved in several product launches including Partner Connect and GCP. Before this at Google he was responsible for the company's largest technology partnerships, including those with SAP and Salesforce.

Commenting on the appointment, co-CEO and co-founder Ori Goshen said: 'As we continue to innovate and provide the best in industry generative AI solutions, we are excited to welcome Pankaj to our team, where he will lead our US expansion and strategic partnerships'.

Web site: www.ai21.com .