About Hedgehog

Network Like a Hyperscaler

Throughout human history, technology has been the driver of human flourishing. AI is the next chapter in this ancient story, and it needs infrastructure to run on. Hedgehog makes that infrastructure deployable by everyone.

We are the open software foundation for modern datacenter infrastructure, bringing hyperscale efficiency to every operator, at every scale. Hedgehog builds an open source, secure, and fully automated AI network that abstracts away the complexity of AI networking. By delivering a turnkey network and a seamless out-of-the-box experience, we ensure new capacity comes online without a networking team on the critical path. In an AI cluster powered by Hedgehog, GPUs stay fed instead of idle, maximizing your hardware investments and accelerating your time-to-value.

Networking can be simple:

The industry has long treated complexity as proof of rigor. We think that's backwards: complexity is a tax you shouldn't have to pay, and abstracting it away requires real engineering rigor, not shortcuts. Simple never means opaque — you can always see what the fabric is doing and why.

The customer is in charge:

Your infrastructure belongs to you — including the right to leave. We'd rather earn your business every quarter than lock you in once, so we support your choice of hardware and NOS, keep what we do inspectable.

Reliability is the baseline, not a feature:

A network is the floor everything else stands on, and it's judged on its worst day, not its average one. We hold that line even when it's inconvenient — we'd rather ship a smaller capability we trust than a bigger one we're guessing about.

Performance is the whole point:

Nobody buys GPUs to watch them wait on the network. Idle compute is wasted capital, so getting out of the silicon's way is the job — and we measure ourselves by how little the fabric costs the workloads it carries

From Open Origins to Universal AI Infrastructure

Hedgehog is a vendor-agnostic networking platform that enables enterprises and AI operators to build hyperscaler-style fabrics using open networking and NVIDIA reference architectures. We believe that every organization running modern AI and cloud workloads deserves the operational agility, performance, and automation of a hyperscaler—without being forced into rigid, single-vendor silos.

We started our journey by solving the hardest operational challenge in the data center: taming the complexity of multi-vendor, commodity hardware. By aligning with Open Compute Project (OCP) standards and championing SONiC, we engineered a cloud-native platform capable of bringing order, automation, and high performance to deeply heterogeneous environments. Mastering this “hard mode” of open networking forced us to build an incredibly resilient, vendor-agnostic architecture.

Today, that same battle-tested architecture is the foundation for our next logical extension. It now enables Hedgehog to support NVIDIA reference designs—specifically integrating Cumulus Linux and Spectrum-X—without sacrificing the openness, portability, or operational control our platform was built upon.

We didn’t change our core; we expanded its reach. The software that automated the open data center is now the same software orchestrating the world’s most powerful AI hardware.

Marc Austin

CEO, Co-Founder

Marc has over three decades of experience across cloud, networking, and enterprise software, Marc has spent his career turning complex infrastructure into scalable, accessible platforms.

Marc previously held leadership roles at Cisco and Amazon, driving innovation in network automation, IoT, and digital platforms.

A repeat founder and investor, he has launched and scaled multiple companies at the intersection of mobility, cloud, and connected systems.

Marc’s mission at Hedgehog is democratizing hyperscale infrastructure—bringing the power of AI-ready networking to every enterprise through open, automated, and radically simpler software.

Sergie Lukianov

Chief Architect, Co-Founder

Sergei leads the technical vision for Hedgehog’s open, cloud-native networking platform. An expert in distributed systems and orchestration, he drives Hedgehog’s mission to deliver hyperscaler-grade, fully automated, Kubernetes-native fabrics to modern data centers.

Before founding Hedgehog, Sergei spent over a decade shaping enterprise cloud infrastructure at Mirantis, ultimately serving as Director of Engineering. There, he led extensive engineering teams across OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Docker initiatives. Recognizing the industry's need for seamless container orchestration, Sergei spearheaded the creation of Mirantis Kubernetes as a Service, bringing robust, highly scalable K8s solutions to the enterprise landscape.

Manish Vachharajani

CTO

Manish Vachharajani is the CTO of Hedgehog, where he architects Kubernetes-native, vendor-neutral networking infrastructure designed to unlock the full potential of AI compute. A specialist in optimizing the hardware-software boundary, Manish brings decades of expertise in high-performance networking and GPU computing.

His foundational academic research pioneered early GPU acceleration and identified the networking bottlenecks that motivated modern host-bypass technologies like NVIDIA GPUDirect.

A two-time founder, Manish previously co-founded LineRate Systems (acquired by F5 Networks) to deliver line-rate SDN on commodity hardware, and Adaptable.io, a Kubernetes-based platform. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.

Chrissy Hildebrandt

VP Finance

Chrissy leads Finance, People, and Legal at Hedgehog, bringing over 25 years of experience driving financial and operational excellence. She has led diligence for nearly $1B in financing and navigated four successful company exits.

A dual US/Canadian CPA, Chrissy began at Deloitte before steering high-growth tech companies. Her leadership spans VP and Controller roles at MATRIXX Software, Jasper Technologies, Good Technology, and Danger, Inc., alongside fractional CFO work for early-stage AI startups like Oski Technology.

Based in Boston with a B.Comm from the University of Toronto, Chrissy is a devoted Maple Leafs and SF Giants fan.

Gabe Montanti

VP SALES

Gabriel (Gabe) Montanti helps enterprises build robust AI cloud infrastructure and network like hyperscalers. An expert in cloud-native networking and software-defined infrastructure, Gabe transforms complex technical challenges into simple, elegant platforms.

As Director of Product Development for Cloud Networking at Equinix, he launched the company’s first multi-cloud routing product, shifting from OEM delivery to a software-defined Layer 3 service that slashed deployment times from weeks to seconds.

Previously, as Global Offering Executive at IBM, he scaled the networking and security business by 108% to $229M, launched 25+ cloud-native solutions, and architected massive, low-latency deployments for global financial institutions.

Matthew Moore

VP Marketing

Matthew leads global go-to-market strategy, product positioning, and demand generation at Hedgehog. With 25 years of experience, he leverages his deep analytical background to translate the complex architecture of AI networking into clear, compelling business value.

Throughout his career, Matthew has driven strategy, pipeline, and product launches at enterprise leaders like Siebel, Sears, and Xero, while holding executive roles at high-growth startups like Winshuttle. A former mobile app founder, he is passionate about building high-performance global teams and perfectly aligning products with customer needs.

Based in Seattle, Matthew holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and is a devoted Wolverines fan.

Art Fewell

Technical Marketing

Art is an infrastructure architect and technical marketing leader with three decades of experience across networking, cloud platforms, and modern data-center systems.

At Hedgehog, he focuses on practical, open architectures that bridge hardware, software, and operations for large-scale AI and GPU clusters.

Prior to Hedgehog, Art spearheaded technical marketing at VMware Tanzu, designing highly sought-after developer enablement programs like PKS Ninja and ModernApps Learning. Leveraging deep expertise in DevOps, AI/ML, and high-performance infrastructure, Art is dedicated to empowering platform engineering teams and ensuring real-world deployment, operability, and scale.