Ketaki Rao

She is a co-inventor of U.S. patent US7634639B2, filed by Sun Microsystems in August 2005 and granted in December 2009. It concerns avoiding live-lock in processors supporting speculative execution.⁠[1]

On January 29, IAB named her a Tech Lab Service Excellence Award recipient for her contribution to the schema of its Dynamic Ad Standards. She was then vice president of product at Jivox.⁠[2]

Version 1.0 of the Dynamic Content Ad Standard lists her among its significant contributors. It defines structured metadata for creative components and asset variations so content systems and ad servers can exchange and deliver dynamic advertising.⁠[3]

She served as chief product officer at data.ai from February 2021 to June 2023.⁠[4]

She led product work from discovery, roadmapping and design through delivery and enablement.⁠[5]

From January 2024 to April 2025, she was a vice president at IBM, working on the product operating model for IBM Software.⁠[4]

She became Crunchbase’s chief product officer in March 2026.⁠[4]

Crunchbase launched Market Insights on June 2 and highlighted her appointment in the announcement. She presented the combination of proprietary data and AI as a way to understand private markets and identify opportunities earlier.⁠[6]

In the October 6 launch announcement for Crunchbase AI, she emphasized trusted, current private-company data for AI workflows. The product supplies company data and signals to agents and application developers through MCP, model connections and APIs.⁠[7]

She holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics, a master’s in electrical engineering from Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and an MBA from INSEAD. Her earlier work included product roles at Sun Microsystems, Amazon and Salesforce.⁠[5]

In her Women In Product interview, she recalled that unlaunched engineering projects prompted her move into product management to understand the business rationale.⁠[8]

At Salesforce, she led data-management-platform work before focusing on identity and consumer rights for its customer data platform.⁠[8]

She described herself as introverted and said she deliberately developed verbal communication skills. She argued that product executives sometimes need to reprioritize their own products for the company’s overall benefit.⁠[8]

In a ProductPlan interview, she argued that data’s value depends on trust, meaningful connections and uniqueness. She used Crunchbase’s behavioral signals and Heat Score to discuss product differentiation.⁠[9]

She described using APIs to work with partners such as Rogo and Clay, enabling financial and go-to-market products without Crunchbase building every vertical application itself.⁠[9]

She supported AI for initial research and prototypes while retaining engineering judgment for enterprise reliability and security. She wanted product managers to own the process from problem selection through launch outcomes.⁠[9]

Women In Product lists her on the WIP Edge Council, which provides networking, mentoring and career-development support to product leaders.⁠[5]

Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/ (opens in a new window). LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ketakirao/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]