Lightning AI Names Former AWS and Confluent Executive Peter Bershatsky VP of Strategy and Business Development

Veteran of AWS's hypergrowth era joins the AI cloud company to build its partner ecosystem across hyperscalers, systems integrators, and ISVs

NEW YORK, July 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lightning AI, the vertically integrated AI cloud company, today announced that Peter Bershatsky has joined as Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. Bershatsky will lead Lightning AI's partnership strategy across hyperscalers, systems integrators, and independent software vendors, and will help shape the company's position in the enterprise AI ecosystem.

Bershatsky brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in strategy, corporate development, and partnerships across cloud and enterprise software. He most recently served as Vice President of Corporate Business Development at Confluent, where he led efforts to help Systems Integration partners to build a real-time data practice, including investments in several systems integrator partners. Peter also helped lead Confluent's acquisitions of Immerok and Warpstream, accelerating Confluent’s roadmap into a broader range of customer use cases. He joined AWS in 2013 as one of its earliest corporate development hires, during the years the business grew from roughly $3 billion to more than $35 billion in revenue, and went on to hold senior strategy and corporate development roles at HP and Alteryx. Earlier in his career worked in strategy and corporate development roles at Intuit and Telenav. He also teaches tech M&A strategy to MBA students at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

"Peter helped build the partnership playbook at AWS when the cloud was being defined for the first time. AI is forcing that definition to happen all over again, and the companies that win this round will be the ones with the strongest ecosystem around them," said William Falcon, Founder and CEO, Lightning AI. "Peter has built that ecosystem before. Now he gets to build it for the cloud that comes next."

The appointment comes as Lightning AI expands its enterprise go-to-market capabilities following its January 2026 merger with Voltage Park, which combined Lightning's developer platform with a fleet of more than 36,000 NVIDIA GPUs across six U.S. data centers. Bershatsky's mandate spans the full partner landscape: hyperscaler alliances, systems integrator relationships that bring Lightning into regulated enterprise environments, and an ISV ecosystem building on the company's platform.

"For years I've watched enterprises assemble AI capability out of parts: compute from one vendor, tooling from another, integration risk everywhere in between. Lightning is the first company I've seen that owns the whole problem," said Peter Bershatsky, VP of Strategy and Business Development, Lightning AI. "The opportunity for customers to combine Lightning's full stack with partner solutions such as hyperscaler infrastructure, the business expertise of Systems Integrators, and the technology advances of the wider ISV ecosystem is truly enormous."

About Lightning AI

Lightning AI is the vertically integrated AI cloud company behind PyTorch Lightning. The company's unified hardware and software stack lets organizations build, evaluate, and operationalize AI workflows across cloud, hybrid, on-prem, and air-gapped deployments. Following its 2026 merger with Voltage Park, Lightning AI operates more than 36,000 NVIDIA GPUs across six U.S. data centers, serving AI-native companies and enterprise teams. Learn more at lightning.ai.

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Headshot of Peter Bershatsky

Peter Bershatsky, VP of Strategy and Business Development at Lightning AI

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