KNIME Taps SaaS Veteran Trevor Kaufman to Lead New Era of AI and Growth

ZURICH, Switzerland – January 16, 2026 – Data science software company KNIME has announced a pivotal leadership transition, appointing seasoned SaaS executive Trevor Kaufman as its new Chief Executive Officer. The move signals a strategic shift for the company, as founder and long-time CEO Michael Berthold steps down from his operational role to make way for a new phase of accelerated commercial growth and technological innovation.

Kaufman, known for his success in scaling high-growth technology firms, takes the helm at a crucial moment. KNIME, celebrated for its powerful open-source analytics platform and vibrant user community, is positioning itself to capitalize on the burgeoning data science market and the emerging era of 'agentic AI'. Berthold will remain a shareholder and will serve as a trusted advisor during the transition.

“It’s been an incredible journey to lead KNIME from the idea of democratizing data science to a company with a product our customers love, hundreds of thousands of users, and a remarkable team,” said Michael Berthold in the official announcement. “I believe Trevor is uniquely suited to keep scaling the business to even greater achievements.”

A Proven Scaler for the Next Stage

Trevor Kaufman’s appointment is a clear signal of KNIME’s ambitions. His career is marked by a consistent ability to transform promising technology companies into global market leaders. Most recently, as CEO of Piano, he grew the analytics and optimization SaaS business from its inception into a global powerhouse with 570 employees across fourteen countries. Under his leadership, Piano executed several strategic acquisitions, including Cxense and AT Internet, dramatically expanding its product suite and global footprint while serving premier clients like The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

Before his tenure at Piano, Kaufman founded the digital agency Schematic in 1999, which he later sold to WPP. Within the advertising giant, he engineered the merger of several agencies to create Possible Worldwide, a 1,300-person global digital network serving blue-chip clients such as P&G, Google, and Microsoft. This deep experience in both building companies from the ground up and scaling them through strategic M&A and operational excellence is precisely what KNIME's board appears to be betting on.

Kaufman’s leadership style, which combines aggressive growth strategies with a focus on culture, seems tailored for KNIME's unique position. “I'm thrilled to join KNIME at such an exciting inflection point,” Kaufman stated. “The foundation that Michael has built — the product, the momentum, the culture — is exceptional. My goal is to preserve and leverage that culture while helping the team scale to meet the growing opportunity in front of us.”

From Founder's Vision to the AI Frontier

Michael Berthold’s departure from the CEO role marks the end of an era. He guided KNIME from a university project to a cornerstone of the data science world, championing an open-source model that democratized access to powerful analytics. The free KNIME Analytics Platform became a favorite among data professionals for its intuitive, low-code visual workflow editor, which serves everyone from novice analysts to expert data scientists. This approach fostered one of the world's largest data science communities, with over 300,000 contributors creating and sharing solutions.

This open-source engine is complemented by the commercial KNIME Business Hub, an enterprise-grade product that enables teams to collaborate, govern, and deploy data science solutions at scale. This hybrid model has propelled the company to an estimated €30 million in revenue, supported by a recent $30 million Series B funding round led by long-time investor Invus.

In his parting remarks, Berthold hinted at the company's next technological horizon. “Over the past years we have completely revamped our software and built a strong basis for the future of data work in the era of agentic AI,” he noted. This reference to 'agentic AI'—autonomous systems that can independently reason, plan, and execute complex tasks—points to where KNIME sees its next major competitive advantage.

Agentic AI represents a significant leap beyond the generative AI tools that have recently captured public attention. Where generative models require human prompts, agentic systems can pursue goals autonomously, potentially revolutionizing how data pipelines are built, models are managed, and insights are generated. KNIME has already laid the groundwork with its K-AI assistant and a secure GenAI Gateway for managing large language models, but the shift towards true agentic capabilities will be a defining challenge and opportunity for the new leadership.

Balancing Community, Commerce, and Competition

As KNIME enters this new chapter, Kaufman faces the delicate task of aggressively scaling the commercial side of the business without undermining the open-source community that forms its foundation. The company operates in a fiercely competitive market, facing off against giants like Alteryx, Dataiku, and the cloud-native platforms from AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The global data science platform market is projected to grow exponentially, reaching over $700 billion by the early 2030s, and securing a larger piece of that pie will require a sharp commercial focus.

Kaufman’s challenge will be to enhance the value proposition of the KNIME Business Hub with enterprise-critical features—such as advanced governance, security, and the commercial application of agentic AI—while ensuring the Analytics Platform remains a vibrant and powerful free tool. Successfully navigating this balance is the key to the open-core business model and will be critical for sustaining the flywheel of community adoption that feeds the commercial pipeline.

The transition represents a maturation of KNIME as a company. It is a deliberate move to pair a deeply technical, community-loved product with a leader whose expertise lies in market expansion and revenue acceleration. For customers and the wider data science community, the coming months will reveal how this new leadership intends to build upon Berthold's foundational vision to not only compete but lead in the rapidly evolving, AI-driven landscape of modern data work.