Opening Keynotes + Fireside Chat

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Session Overview

Welcome to Data Streaming Summit (DSS) 2026! Watch the full opening keynote and fireside chat exploring the convergence of real-time data streaming and agentic AI.

In this session, industry leaders discuss how enterprises can move AI agents from prototype to production by bridging the gap between frontier models and fresh, governed real-time data. Learn about the new "Streamhouse" architecture, major platform updates across Apache Pulsar and Kafka, native Databricks integration, and practical perspectives from OpenAI and leading practitioners.

Key Highlights

Introducing the Streamhouse Architecture: A vendor-neutral, open standard for real-time, production-native data pipelines.
Apache Pulsar 5 & Scalable Topics: Dynamic auto-scaling without partition guesswork.
Ursa Engine & Lakehouse-Native Kafka: Direct-to-object-storage streaming with open formats.
StreamNative SQL Workspace: Real-time materialized views and continuous transformations powered by RisingWave.
End-to-End Governance & Lineage: Integrating directly with Databricks Unity Catalog.
The Context Interface & Agentic Infrastructure: Insights from OpenAI on scaling infrastructure for millions of automated agents.
Fireside Chat: Shifting from SaaS volume to AI-driven business outcomes.

About Speaker

Sijie Guo Sijie’s journey with Apache Pulsar began at Yahoo! where he was part of the team working to develop a global messaging platform for the company. He then went to Twitter, where he led the messaging infrastructure group and co-created DistributedLog and Twitter EventBus. In 2017, he co-founded Streamlio, which was acquired by Splunk, and in 2019 he founded StreamNative. He is one of the original creators of Apache Pulsar and Apache BookKeeper, and remains VP of Apache BookKeeper and PMC Member of Apache Pulsar. Sijie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.

Kundan Vyas Director, Product & Partnerships at StreamNative, owning the end-to-end cloud product portfolio across Serverless, Dedicated, and BYOC offerings for Kafka, Pulsar, Flink, and Agentic AI. Leads strategy and execution for lakehouse-native integrations with partners across Iceberg and Delta ecosystems, delivering AI-ready, real-time data platforms. Also owns global partnerships across cloud service providers, ISVs, and system integrators—driving co-build, co-sell, and go-to-market initiatives that accelerate customer adoption, expansion, and new logo growth.

Matteo Merli Matteo is the CTO at StreamNative, where he brings rich experience in distributed pub-sub messaging platforms. Matteo was one of the co-creators of Apache Pulsar during his time at Yahoo!. Matteo worked to create a global, distributed messaging system for Yahoo!, which would later become Apache Pulsar. Matteo is the PMC Chair of Apache Pulsar, where he helps to guide the community and ensure the success of the Pulsar project. He is also a PMC member for Apache BookKeeper. Matteo lives in Menlo Park, California.

Ray Qureshi Ray Qureshi is a technical leader and Member of Technical Staff on OpenAI’s Data Platform team, where he helps grow and scale the data infrastructure behind OpenAI’s products including ChatGPT and Codex, along with OpenAI’s research, and business operations. His work spans large-scale data platforms, streaming, batch, reliability, availability, and the emerging use of AI agents to build, operate, and improve production systems. Ray is especially focused on turning frontier model capabilities into practical engineering leverage while preserving the security, correctness, and operational discipline that critical infrastructure requires.

Rayees Pasha Rayees Pasha is the CPO at RisingWave Labs, a startup pioneering the development of Streaming Database. Rayees is responsible for all areas of Product management and Marketing. His expertise is in the areas of data management and big data analytics. He has held product management roles delivering enterprise software in both traditional and SaaS environments. Prior to moving to Product management, he worked at Hewlett-Packard as a software designer working on different aspects of database management systems.

Jaime López Jaime López is Director of Product Excellence at Ververica, the company behind Apache Flink® and Streamhouse. He focuses on mission-critical infrastructure for industries like banking and energy. Jaime is an engineer with fourteen years in B2B technology at Ververica, Aiven and Wärtsilä, and he works where product, AI and go-to-market meet. An internationally recognized speaker, he has spoken at Flink Forward, Flink Forward Asia, Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, Dreamforce, Power-Gen Europe, Power-Gen Asia at FUTR Europe, among others. He holds an M.Sc. in Energy Engineering from the Technical University of Madrid and a MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science from MIT.

Benjamin Mathew Ben is a product manager at Databricks working on interoperability across open table formats, catalogs, and query engines

Justin Zhu Justin Zhu is the Founder and CEO of Mithra —Marketing OS for AI Era, headquartered in San Francisco. Mithra automates the entire marketing function, from customer acquisition to retention, built on Mithra’s state-of-the-art foundational model for marketing. Previously, Justin co-founded and served as CEO of Iterable, a leading marketing platform, powering 1000 enterprise brands, including DoorDash, CapitalOne, Tesla and MLB. He raised $340M, last valued at $2B. In 2021, Justin co-founded Stand with Asian Americans (SwAA), a nonprofit to defend the civil rights of Asian Americans. In response to the Atlanta Spa Shootings, SwAA launched a full-page letter in WSJ, condemning anti-Asian hate crimes, signed by over 9000 leaders, including the founders of Zoom, Alibaba, Yahoo, and President George W. Bush.

Opening Keynotes + Fireside Chat

Session Overview

Key Highlights

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