Marking 10 Years of Breakthroughs, Cockroach Labs Accelerates Its Momentum with Key Executive Appointment
NEW YORK, April 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Cockroach Labs, the pioneer in cloud-native distributed SQL databases with CockroachDB, today announced the appointment of Sailesh Munagala as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This announcement comes at a defining moment—not just for the company, but for the entire database industry.
For the past decade, Cockroach Labs has been a driving force behind the advent of cloud-native distributed databases—enabling extraordinary resilience and global scalability. Legacy databases, still the backbone of most enterprise data architectures, struggle to keep pace with the growing scale, fast-paced evolution, and performance demands of modern applications. As businesses demand more from their data, Cockroach Labs has met the moment with innovation that redefines what’s possible in an increasingly digital, AI-driven world.
CockroachDB is the product of ten years of relentless innovation, and has redefined what enterprises expect from their database infrastructure. From the start, its mission has been clear: to power the mission-critical applications of the world’s most demanding businesses, including Bose, Hard Rock Digital, Shipt, Checkout.com, and Fortinet.
Financial Leadership to Propel Cockroach Lab’s Next Phase of Growth
Sailesh Munagala brings deep financial and operational expertise, having scaled some of the world’s leading technology companies. He joins Cockroach Labs from Vectra AI, a cybersecurity leader in AI-driven threat detection, where he led Finance, Business Operations, Revenue Operations, IT, and Legal. Prior to that, he was CFO at Relativity, a PE-backed legal tech platform, where he oversaw a 60-person team spanning FP&A, Accounting, Tax, Treasury, M&A, Corp Dev, Real Estate, and Procurement. Over three and a half years, he helped more than double revenue from $250M to $550M ARR. Prior to Relativity, Sailesh held senior finance roles at Google Cloud, following a five-year tenure at Palo Alto Networks. At Palo Alto Networks, he played a key role in its scale-up from $500M to $3B ARR, first as Head of Corporate FP&A and later as divisional CFO for the Cortex business. With this track record of driving growth and leading through scale, Sailesh is a critical addition to Cockroach Labs’ leadership as it enters its next decade of innovation.
“The future of applications belongs to AIs accessing databases—and they’ll do so at breathtaking scale. This is precisely what CockroachDB was designed to accommodate, with zero tolerance for downtime,” said Spencer Kimball, CEO of Cockroach Labs. “Sailesh’s expertise with high-growth technology companies will be critical as we drive the next wave of innovation. His leadership will help propel our financial strategy as we continue redefining how businesses manage data at scale.”
Sailesh joins an executive team stacked with go-to-market leadership, including President and Chief Revenue Officer Jason Forget—who joined Cockroach Labs after growing Redis from its first sale to 9,000+ paying customers, including a significant share of the Fortune 100. Jason previously led Imperva’s global sales to $300M, bringing a proven formula for scaling enterprise adoption.
A Decade of Industry Momentum That Signals a Market Shift
Cockroach Labs’ impact over the past decade isn’t just measured in years—it’s measured in the industry-wide shift toward distributed, cloud-native databases:
- Enterprise Customer adoption is surging – As businesses modernize their architectures, Cockroach Labs has seen a 200% year-over-year increase in new customer lands, underscoring the industry’s rapid shift to distributed databases.
- Revenue growth signals a long-term market shift – As cloud-first strategies become the norm, new ARR surged 80% year-over-year, proving accelerating demand for distributed, cloud-native solutions.
- Cloud momentum tailwinds – Demand for scalable, cloud-native databases is driving over 100% year-over-year ARR growth in the cloud, positioning Cockroach Labs as the go-to database for the next generation of applications.
“Cockroach Labs’ strength lies not only in its cutting-edge technology but in its ability to bridge legacy architectures to a future defined by resilience, scale, and continuous availability,” said Sailesh Munagala, CFO of Cockroach Labs. “The work done over the past decade sets the stage for the next era of innovation, and I’m excited to join this talented team to drive that transformation, delivering exceptional value to our customers.”
For companies still anchored to legacy architectures, the choice is increasingly clear: CockroachDB isn’t just an alternative—it’s the future. Learn more: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/product/overview/
About Cockroach Labs
Cockroach Labs is a pioneering software company at the forefront of database technology, dedicated to delivering resilient and scalable database solutions to run mission-critical workloads for the world’s most important businesses. The company’s clients include Bose, Form3, Hard Rock Digital, and Shipt, Fortune 50 global financial institutions as well as retail and media industry leaders. With a mission to scale when others fail, Cockroach Labs is revolutionizing the way businesses manage their data with its innovative cloud native distributed SQL database, CockroachDB.
SOURCE Cockroach Labs, Inc.