Christopher Lynch
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
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I’ve built my career leading high-growth enterprise software companies—scaling…
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Articles by Christopher
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My Big Rethink Part 6: When is it Time to Renegotiate Investor Preference and Anti-dilution in Order to Protect Employee Shareholders?
My Big Rethink Part 6: When is it Time to Renegotiate Investor Preference and Anti-dilution in Order to Protect Employee Shareholders?
This is the sixth in a series of posts related to rethinking governance and compensation practices at venture-backed…
11 Comments -
My Big Rethink Part 5: Executive Compensation Transparency and Accountability
My Big Rethink Part 5: Executive Compensation Transparency and Accountability
This is the fifth in a series of posts related to rethinking governance and compensation practices at venture-backed…
9 Comments -
My Big Rethink Part 4: Responsible Maintenance of 409a Valuations
My Big Rethink Part 4: Responsible Maintenance of 409a Valuations
This is the fourth in a series of posts related to rethinking governance and compensation practices at venture-backed…
7 Comments -
My Big Rethink Part 3: Rethinking Employee Option Exercise Policies
My Big Rethink Part 3: Rethinking Employee Option Exercise Policies
This is the third in a series of posts related to rethinking governance and compensation practices at venture-backed…
13 Comments -
My Big Rethink Part 2: Rethinking Pre-IPO Secondary Sales and Liquidity for Employees
My Big Rethink Part 2: Rethinking Pre-IPO Secondary Sales and Liquidity for Employees
This is the second in a series of posts related to rethinking governance and compensation practices at venture-backed…
14 Comments -
My Big Rethink Part 1: Board Structure and the Myth of Independent Oversight
My Big Rethink Part 1: Board Structure and the Myth of Independent Oversight
This is the first of a series of posts related to rethinking governance and compensation practices at venture-backed…
17 Comments -
My Big ReThink: Lessons from a Decade of Leadership at DataRobot
My Big ReThink: Lessons from a Decade of Leadership at DataRobot
I love DataRobot. Being DataRobot’s founding investor and serving as executive chairman for over 10 years are two…
9 Comments -
Too Important to Fail: Why DataRobot is the Category-Defining Brand in AI
Too Important to Fail: Why DataRobot is the Category-Defining Brand in AI
Although I left the board several weeks ago, I remain committed to DataRobot, to its vision, and to its incredible…
25 Comments -
Why I just can't seem to keep my shirt on
Why I just can't seem to keep my shirt on
As I have written before, my grandmother would always say to me, "Chris, keep your shirt on." She meant it as advice to…
22 Comments -
Why I joined Snowplow as Chairman: AI-Ready Data is a Game Changer.
Why I joined Snowplow as Chairman: AI-Ready Data is a Game Changer.
In addition to being CEO of AtScale and Executive Chairman at DataRobot, I am an active investor in dozens of other…
27 Comments
Activity
20K followers
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisChristopher Lynch reposted thisAI agents are expensive, and not just in the ways most people are measuring. The hidden cost is what I call the agent tax: when an AI agent lacks a governed business context and a deterministic query engine, it runs hundreds of redundant, exploratory queries against your data warehouse, trying to find its way to an answer. It's guessing at scale. You pay for every query in compute and in latency. And you still might not get a number your finance team trusts. We've seen query costs drop by up to 6x when agents operate through a governed semantic engine rather than querying raw tables directly. That's the difference between AI that's economically viable at enterprise scale and AI that quietly burns your cloud budget and produces unreliable outputs. Governance is more than a compliance concern. It's now the path to managing your cloud costs. #AgenticAI #EnterpriseAI #DataGovernance #CloudCosts #DataArchitecture
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisChristopher Lynch reposted thisIn 1 hour, we'll show you how Cyberhaven's new Agentic AI Security solution enables security teams to discover, monitor, and control agents across the enterprise, and how the Analyst Plugin turns every analyst into a Cyberhaven power user. Register for today's launch to see the future of AI-enabled data security in action. Join us at 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET: https://lnkd.in/gBC3k42i #CyberhavenProductLaunch
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Christopher Lynch shared thisNoah Hollmann I missed you..happy investor ..note to wouldbe vc’s: a sincere smile goes a long way. Apologies, love&respect!😎Christopher Lynch shared thisForbes 30 Under 30 Europe - AI! What makes it even crazier: Siyuan Guo from our research team independently made the Science list for her work on the Physics of Learning, and Sivesh Sukumar from Balderton, who helped lead our seed round, made the Finance list. Three Forbes listers in one startup. That says something! My path here wasn't exactly linear. I studied CS, went into medicine, realized tabular data was the most important and most neglected data type in both fields, and dropped out to co-found Prior Labs with Frank Hutter and Sauraj Gambhir. Since then: TabPFN featured on the cover of Nature, over 3 million downloads, state-of-the-art on independent benchmarks, and a team of over 30 across Berlin, Freiburg, and New York. If you want to work alongside people like Siyuan and the rest of this incredible team: https://lnkd.in/e7PTqK5A #ForbesUnder30 #TabPFN
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisChristopher Lynch reposted thisManufacturing already has the data. The LLMs are capable. What's missing is the context that makes both trustworthy. Industry 5.0 promises autonomous operations, but there's a gap most architectures haven't closed. Machine signals and business logic have never been formally connected at the semantic level. An AI agent can detect that vibration on Line 4 is abnormal, but without governed definitions linking that signal to downtime cost, SLA exposure, and parts inventory, it cannot act on it intelligently. In an agentic environment, that gap doesn't stay contained. Agents act on inconsistent definitions at machine speed, driving bad decisions, redundant queries, and rising cloud costs without improving outcomes. My new blog covers the four failure modes in manufacturing AI deployments and what it takes to close the IT/OT gap at the semantic level. Link in comments. #AgenticAI #SemanticLayer #ManufacturingAI #DataGovernance #EnterpriseAI
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisChristopher Lynch reposted thisIt's hereeee! Registration is now open for the 2026 Semantic Layer Summit. I've been attending this event annually almost since it first began. Semantic layers have become more important than ever. They give AI the business context it needs to operate in a way you can actually trust. If you want to power natural language analytics or govern agents across your enterprise, you would be remiss to look over the role of a semantic layer in your strategy. Free to register here for the virtual summit: https://bit.ly/3P8YfCX They've got some big names lined up to show how all of this works in practice, including: >> how Carrefour enabled 2,500 users to move beyond dashboards and establish the context layer for agentic analytics >> how Blue Yonder built a semantic foundation that's ready for agents >> and familiar names Sanjeev Mohan, Jessica Talisman and Juan Sequeda are uniting on a panel to break down knowledge graphs vs ontologies vs semantic layers (a MUST-attend given how complex these concepts can initially be) >> plus a keynote from David P. Mariani himself, founder and CTO at AtScale See you there May 20th! #AtScalePartner #semanticlayer #analytics #AI 🖤 P.S. This was written without the help of AI. When I originally wrote 'you would be remiss to' (I read a lot of books, so a large vocabulary and those types of phrases come naturally to me) and then went back and reread it, I thought, does this sound too much like AI now?! 😂 I kept it anyway. I won't let AI change how I write.
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisChristopher Lynch reposted thisThis is what happens when you don't own your semantic layer. Microsoft removed BI compatibility mode from the Databricks connector without warning. Dashboards built on Unity Catalog Metric Views broke across global enterprises. The guidance from both vendors was either switch tools or go vote on a forum. It begs the question: who owns your business definitions? What happens to your AI strategy when those definitions are controlled by a vendor roadmap? AtScale CEO Christopher Lynch breaks down the business case for owning your semantic layer, especially in the age of AI agents. https://lnkd.in/eVUCrcdD #SemanticLayer #DataGovernance #EnterpriseAI
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisNo Rain, No Flowers. The Boston tech community has always been at its best when people show up for each other. Right now, we have the chance to show up for the family of Andrew Smeaton after an unimaginable loss. Andrew was a devoted husband, a proud father of seven, and a friend to many. On Thursday, June 4, we’ll come together in South Boston for a night of music, remembrance, and support. The Tech Tackles Cancer band, Tony S., and The Savtones will be playing live at Capo Supper Club. Doors open at 5:30 PM. Buy a ticket, make a donation, or just help spread the word. Every bit matters. Let’s show Andrew’s family what this community can do. Donate or buy tickets: https://lnkd.in/eV8xEPbG #TechTacklesCancer #BostonTech #BostonEvents #GiveBack #Community CC: Andrew Smeaton DataRobot Michael Gilday Liverpool John Moores University Harvard University Edinburgh Napier UniversityTTC Supports The Smeaton Family - Tech Tackles CancerTTC Supports The Smeaton Family - Tech Tackles Cancer
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisONE TICKET LEFT! We can't wait to have Jen Thompson as our speaker this Thursday at 6 pm at Georgie's Wine Bar (and Sister Wine Shop) in Boston. Join us for wine and light bites with Jen Thompson — lawyer, former national political strategist, media commentator, and author of the forthcoming Wild Pivot: Notes from a Political Life Rewritten. A conversation about reinvention, power, and personal transformation. Grab the last ticket here: https://lnkd.in/eYBjgk8kChristopher Lynch reposted thisAbout a year ago, I was on the island of Rügen, between Germany and Sweden. I had just signed my publishing contract, and I was very scared. Every decision felt like I would be exposing too much and look ridiculous. But I kept going. Photos. My website. My Substack. Step by step by step. And now, eleven months later, I’ll be in Boston this Thursday, speaking to an incredible group of women at a women-owned wine bar featuring women-owned vineyards from around the world. When I say women supporting women, I mean it. I am so grateful for all of your support. Thank you. ❤️
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Christopher Lynch reposted thisChristopher Lynch reposted thisManufacturing already has the data. The LLMs are capable. What's missing is the context that makes both trustworthy. Industry 5.0 promises autonomous operations, but there's a gap most architectures haven't closed. Machine signals and business logic have never been formally connected at the semantic level. An AI agent can detect that vibration on Line 4 is abnormal, but without governed definitions linking that signal to downtime cost, SLA exposure, and parts inventory, it cannot act on it intelligently. In an agentic environment, that gap doesn't stay contained. Agents act on inconsistent definitions at machine speed, driving bad decisions, redundant queries, and rising cloud costs without improving outcomes. My new blog covers the four failure modes in manufacturing AI deployments and what it takes to close the IT/OT gap at the semantic level. Link in comments. #AgenticAI #SemanticLayer #ManufacturingAI #DataGovernance #EnterpriseAI
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Christopher Lynch liked thisChristopher Lynch liked thisAnthropic is giving away $10,000 of AI education. (13 free courses with certificates) ANTHROPIC ACADEMY: 01 / Claude 101 ✦ Get started with Claude ✦ https://lnkd.in/ebGCZtUY 02 / Building with the Claude API ✦ Full API fundamentals course ✦ https://lnkd.in/ePshzt_D 03 / Claude Code in Action ✦ 21 lessons, free certificate ✦ https://lnkd.in/ePYZXdWz 04 / Intro to Model Context Protocol ✦ Build MCP servers from scratch ✦ https://lnkd.in/eqJ-Z2ej 05 / MCP: Advanced Topics ✦ Production patterns and transport ✦ https://lnkd.in/e_-YGFDS 06 / Introduction to Agent Skills ✦ Build and share reusable Skills ✦ https://lnkd.in/eaKinHnJ 07 / Claude with Amazon Bedrock ✦ Deploy Claude inside AWS ✦ https://lnkd.in/eJwPfPrH 08 / Claude with Google Vertex AI ✦ Deploy Claude via Google Cloud ✦ https://lnkd.in/erQZ6H2P 09 / AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations ✦ Core AI concepts and responsible use ✦ https://lnkd.in/ey7XZ_3s 10 / AI Fluency for Students ✦ AI skills for academic success ✦ https://lnkd.in/eaqirKKq 11 / AI Fluency for Educators ✦ Apply AI Fluency in teaching ✦ https://lnkd.in/eM8dAbnz 12 / AI Fluency for Nonprofits ✦ AI skills for mission-driven teams ✦ https://lnkd.in/ewSD3_yX 13 / Teaching AI Fluency ✦ Teach and assess AI Fluency ✦ https://lnkd.in/eg9r5RmS DOCUMENTATION: ✦ docs.claude.com (developer docs) ✦ support.claude.com (help center) ✦ anthropic.com/learn (learning hub) Want to see how I use all of this? I write free Claude guides in my newsletter. Click here → charliehills.substack.com These resources have existed for months. Most people are still Googling "how to use Claude." Now you have no excuse. Repost ♻️ so others find it too.
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Christopher Lynch liked thisChristopher Lynch liked thisAI agents are expensive, and not just in the ways most people are measuring. The hidden cost is what I call the agent tax: when an AI agent lacks a governed business context and a deterministic query engine, it runs hundreds of redundant, exploratory queries against your data warehouse, trying to find its way to an answer. It's guessing at scale. You pay for every query in compute and in latency. And you still might not get a number your finance team trusts. We've seen query costs drop by up to 6x when agents operate through a governed semantic engine rather than querying raw tables directly. That's the difference between AI that's economically viable at enterprise scale and AI that quietly burns your cloud budget and produces unreliable outputs. Governance is more than a compliance concern. It's now the path to managing your cloud costs. #AgenticAI #EnterpriseAI #DataGovernance #CloudCosts #DataArchitecture
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Christopher Lynch liked thisChristopher Lynch liked thisIn 1 hour, we'll show you how Cyberhaven's new Agentic AI Security solution enables security teams to discover, monitor, and control agents across the enterprise, and how the Analyst Plugin turns every analyst into a Cyberhaven power user. Register for today's launch to see the future of AI-enabled data security in action. Join us at 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET: https://lnkd.in/gBC3k42i #CyberhavenProductLaunch
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Christopher Lynch liked thisChristopher Lynch liked thisIt started when searching for a podcast to listen to on my 1hr+ daycare runs. The once disruptive commute has now been the place where I have learned the most about AI, its disruptive tech and what it means for the future to come. I was so excited to have attended a live Moonshots event with Peter H. Diamandis Alex Wissner-Gross Dave B. Blundin Salim Ismail Ray Kurzweil at MIT this Monday. If I can give some key takeaways: 1 - Mindset is going to become even more important. Having the right attitude and adaptability will take you far. 2 - Soft skills are going to matter a lot in a world of AI 3 - Get started now, try out the models, build something. We might not always have access to the best models in the world and the ability to buy compute easily 4 - We are going to live through as much change in the next 5 years as the previous century. It is both exciting & scary. But with this comes opportunities to build for the better 5 - Abundance is starting to grow. Advancements in medicine, food production and robotics will mean more for all Im not often at conferences for my own interests. It was amazing to take the day and join 100 others from around the world that are in the words of Alex: 'Definitely not sleeping through the Singularity!' It felt so good to be that room. I am still buzzing with excitement and motivation to build the future.
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Christopher Lynch liked thisChristopher Lynch liked thisForbes 30 Under 30 Europe - AI! What makes it even crazier: Siyuan Guo from our research team independently made the Science list for her work on the Physics of Learning, and Sivesh Sukumar from Balderton, who helped lead our seed round, made the Finance list. Three Forbes listers in one startup. That says something! My path here wasn't exactly linear. I studied CS, went into medicine, realized tabular data was the most important and most neglected data type in both fields, and dropped out to co-found Prior Labs with Frank Hutter and Sauraj Gambhir. Since then: TabPFN featured on the cover of Nature, over 3 million downloads, state-of-the-art on independent benchmarks, and a team of over 30 across Berlin, Freiburg, and New York. If you want to work alongside people like Siyuan and the rest of this incredible team: https://lnkd.in/e7PTqK5A #ForbesUnder30 #TabPFN
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Christopher Lynch liked thisChristopher Lynch liked this💃 What happens in Vegas… counts as cardio! 😂 Who says exercise has to be serious? I stepped out for a night on the town in Vegas and ended up in a full-blown dance battle with a gorilla who clearly did not come to play. 🦍✨ Between the shimmying, laughing, and trying not to get upstaged, I’m calling this my most entertaining birthday month workout! You don’t have to overthink it. You can find all kinds of opportunities to stay active. You need to get out into the world, try something unexpected, and don’t be afraid to get into some silliness 🎉. #GorillaDance #FunFitness #KeepMoving #StrongMindStrongBody #MindsetShift #GrowthMindset #health #courage #nuturing #love #loveyourself #youarepowerful #WendyIda #WendyIdaFitness #prioritizeyourself #healthylifestyle
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Adam Lazovski
Israeli M&A is running at an unprecedented pace in 2026 and the underlaying reason is really interesting. Wiz and CyberArk both cleared regulatory approval on deals announced last year. That's two megadeals closing on the same day. Beyond the massive headlines, the baseline activity in 2026 caught my attention. The numbers so far (as of Feb 11): → 13 disclosed acquisitions in 42 days → $4.2B of M&A capital → 2.2 deals per week This amounts to $100M of #liquidity returning to investors every day! What other ecosystem provides $100M of liquidity per day on average since the beginning of 2026? If this pace holds, we're looking at ~113 M&As by year-end and close to $37B in disclosed value. This is excluding the just approved megadeals and excluding the unannounced rounds (which probably add $3-20m each). What's driving this? AI is the obvious answer. 10 of 13 deals are AI-centric companies. But I think there's something deeper happening: - Acquirers are paying premium multiples to compress time-to-AI-capability rather than build internally. - Israeli startups are shipping production-level AI, not demos. That's the arbitrage. - Speed > cost in this market cycle. Meanwhile, startup creation is on the rise (we predicted this in our stealth report ~12-months ago). It seems the industry will continue producing sellable companies at an increasing rate. This year is poised to be very interesting 😇
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Alexandre BLANC Cyber Security
Is security enough for data protection ? Or do we need a little more ? ISMS, or information security management systems are designed to protect information, confidentiality, integrity, availability. Now, when using SFTP, the files are perfectly secure from a transfer standpoint, but, what about governance ? Audit capability ? Access control ? That's where the gap is. And yes, having an authentication bringing audit capability is also a factor in data governance. 👉 https://gag.gl/2ZxYDE #cybersecurity Kiteworks #governance #SSH #SFTP
5 Comments -
Bob Cramer
Informative new blog from Chairman Partners, LLC portfolio company, Plume Security, Inc, on the 3 "E"s of stopping ransomware attacks. Plume's new RansomStop is addressing an unmet need for businesses looking for a cost-effective, easy-to-install solution to prevent cyber chaos. https://lnkd.in/e94xz5q3
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Matthew Yorke
In the latest episode of CRN In Depth, Gina Narcisi talks with Steven Burke, who covered #HPEDiscover, to learn about: - The tech giant's GreenLake Intelligence agentic AI framework and how it measures up to the competition - The company's new unified partner program, and - HPE CEO Antonio Neri's thoughts on clearing the final hurdle of its planned acquisition of Juniper Networks, which is going to trial in July Watch the entire episode here: https://okt.to/p0FYnW.
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Dave Krauthamer
Your CNSA 2.0 deadline isn't 2030. It's now. Most federal contractors are tracking the wrong timeline. They're focused on 2030 firmware signing deadlines and 2033 legacy system cutoffs. By January 1, 2027, all new NSS acquisitions are expected to be CNSA 2.0-compliant by default. That means the hardware, operating systems, appliances, and applications you’re designing, certifying, and bidding... Must already be PQC-ready and CNSA 2.0 aligned. Not “we’ll fix it in 2030.” But if you can't enumerate your RSA and ECDSA assets today, you're already behind. Here's what the roadmap actually looks like: → Ongoing Discovery starts now (cryptographic bill of materials takes weeks, not days) → ML-KEM-1024 and ML-DSA-87 are your approved algorithms for key establishment and signatures → Crypto-agility matters more than algorithm selection We're seeing two types of organizations: those treating this as a 2030 problem, and those who started their CBOM last quarter. The second group will have a competitive advantage when federal procurement requirements tighten. I built a one-page cheat sheet with all compliance checkpoints, approved algorithms, migration strategy, and regulatory deadlines. Comment "roadmap," and I'll send you the full high-res version
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The Cyber Security Hub™
Download Pentera Labs Report - revealing three new critical injection points in the ingress-nginx controller, building on Wiz’s IngressNightmare CVE. These overlooked vulnerabilities could let attackers hijack traffic, spoof headers, or reach unauthorized backend services - They exist in one of the most widely used ingress controllers in Kubernetes, putting countless environments at risk. This research highlights how small misconfigurations can lead to major exposure in modern cloud-native architectures. What’s Inside: ✅ 3 new injection vulnerabilities in ingress-nginx ✅ How attackers find and exploit CVEs in open source ✅ Actionable tips to secure your Kubernetes environment https://lnkd.in/eHtX6EdP
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Helen Yu
When did your board last conduct a cyber risk assessment that could withstand regulatory scrutiny? The 2025 Armis Cyberwarfare Report reveals 3 critical governance gaps that require immediate board attention: ✅ Resource Allocation Disconnect: Organizations are systematically under-investing in AI-powered security while threat actors accelerate adoption of these same technologies. ✅ Expertise Deficit: Half of organizations lack competency to implement modern security frameworks. This creates accountability gaps that regulators will exploit. ✅ Reactive Posture Risk: Most organizations operate in crisis response mode rather than proactive threat management. The governance imperative: Boards must transition from cybersecurity oversight to cyber risk governance. This means establishing cyber risk as a core board competency, implementing continuous risk assessment, and aligning investment with actual threat intelligence. I've created a strategic framework outlining 5 immediate actions boards must take to address these gaps. Link to the report: https://bit.ly/4nuQFiL What's your board's current approach to cyber risk governance? #Governance #RiskManagement #BoardDirectors #Cybersecurity #Armis To Stay ahead in #Technology and #Innovation: 👉 Subscribe to the CXO Spice Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg 📺 Subscribe to CXO Spice YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gnMc-Vpj
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