From Insight to Outcome: The Story of Galileo

At Walden Catalyst, we partner with founders building at the frontiers of AI infrastructure. Galileo is a strong example of that approach, identifying an emerging need early, executing with discipline, and navigating a rapidly evolving market to a successful outcome.

Today, we are pleased to share that Cisco has announced its intent to acquire Galileo, marking an important milestone for the company and its team.

Founding Insight

Galileo was founded by Vikram Chatterji, Atindriyo Sanyal, and Yash Sheth with a clear insight: as machine learning systems move from experimentation to production, evaluation, observability, and reliability become mission-critical.

As enterprises increasingly deploy agentic AI systems, the need for real-time observability, reliability, and trust has become critical.

While much of the industry focused on building models, Galileo focused on a harder problem, helping enterprises evaluate, monitor, and improve AI systems in real-world environments, with a focus on observability, reliability, and trust.

From the outset, the company positioned itself at the intersection of data, models, and production systems, a space that would become increasingly important as AI adoption accelerated.

Building in a Competitive Landscape

Over the past two years, the AI infrastructure landscape evolved rapidly. A wave of well-funded startups entered the category, while large platforms and hyperscalers introduced adjacent capabilities, often bundled into broader offerings.

This created a highly competitive environment for independent companies operating in this category.

Despite this, Galileo demonstrated strong execution. The company grew ARR by over 300% in 2025 and continued to deliver strong performance into the following year, even while navigating acquisition discussions.

Adapting to Market Dynamics

As the market matured, it became increasingly clear that scale, distribution, and ecosystem integration would play a critical role in shaping long-term outcomes.

Galileo’s leadership team made a pragmatic decision to pursue a strategic path that would allow the technology and team to continue to grow within a larger platform.

From early positioning to navigating market dynamics, WCV worked closely with the team through key inflection points in the company’s journey.

A Strategic Outcome

Galileo’s acquisition by Cisco reflects the growing importance of observability and trust in AI systems as they move into production.

The founders, key technical leaders, and the vast majority of the team are expected to join the acquirer, where Galileo’s technology is expected to play an important role within its broader AI platform.

Looking Ahead

Galileo’s journey reinforces a broader shift in AI: as systems scale, performance alone is not enough: observability, reliability, and trust become foundational.

At Walden Catalyst, we continue to invest in these critical layers of the AI stack, partnering with founders building the infrastructure behind the next generation of intelligent systems.

We are proud to have partnered with Vikram, Atindriyo, and Yash, and we look forward to their continued success.