Jyoti Bansal

Jyoti Bansal (born May 6, 1977) is an Indian-American billionaire technology entrepreneur. He founded his first company AppDynamics in April 2008, and was CEO until 2015. AppDynamics was acquired by Cisco Systems for $3.7 billion, a day before AppDynamics was due for an initial public offering. He later founded additional technology companies, including Traceable, and is the co-founder and CEO of Harness. He also co-founded the venture capital firm Unusual Ventures and the start-up studio BIG Labs.

As of 2026, Bansal has a net worth of US$ 2.3 billion.

Early life and education Bansal was born in India. He grew up in a small city in the state of Rajasthan, where he helped his father run a small farm equipment retail business. Bansal attended the Indian Institute of Technology–Delhi, where he studied computer science from 1995 to 1999. In 2000, Bansal moved to the United States to work in the technology industry in Silicon Valley.

Career Bansal worked for a number of Silicon Valley start-ups from 2000 to 2007. The restrictions of his work visa prevented him from creating his own start-up company in the US He went on to be the company's Chairman during its sale to Cisco Systems.

In June 2016, Bansal was awarded Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Northern California.

In December 2016, AppDynamics submitted a prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the initial public offering (IPO) of its stock. The company was due to open for public trade in January 2017 when a deal was reached, just days before, for the sale of the company to Cisco Systems. The final offered price of the sale totaled $3.7 billion.

BIG Labs In October 2017, Bansal launched BIG (Bansal Innovation Group) Labs, a start-up studio, as his start-up testing ground to test out ideas and technology problems. In the same year, he launched Harness, the first start-up out of BIG Labs. The company was developed as part of BIG Labs, a start-up studio founded by Bansal.

In July 2020, Bansal co-founded Traceable, a cybersecurity company focused on application security, where he is CEO. The company focuses on securing application programming interfaces (APIs) and protecting software applications from cyber threats.

In February 2025, Harness merged with Traceable and integrated its technology into its platform.

Unusual Ventures In May 2018, Bansal announced that he and venture capitalist John Vrionis were launching a new seed fund, called Unusual Ventures with over $500 million of capital under management.

Bansal intends to focus on mentoring early stage start-ups, partnering with nonprofits and offering frequent masterclasses for budding entrepreneurs.