Building the Future of Cloud and Networking with Gal Malach, Co-Founder & CTO of Xsight Labs

Speaker A: Welcome to the Innovators of Things podcast, a profile series about the builders and leaders of connected devices powered by hologram. Today's guest is Gal Malch, co founder and CTO of Excite Labs. Gal has spent decades redefining chip in cloud innovation. In this episode he shares how bold thinking and relentless focus built breakthrough tech for the AI era. Now to our host, Jillian Kaplan.

Speaker B: My name is Gillian Kaplan. Welcome to Innovators of um Things. I am here with Gal Malach from Excite Labs. Gal, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, happy to have you here. We want to learn. We start off learning about like, who is Gall? Where did Gol come from? How did you get to where you are today? We'd love to learn a little bit about your background.

Speaker C: Sure. So thank you, Jillian. Uh, first of all, let's start with you know, um, you know I started my career like 25 years ago. I uh, was actually starting as a software guy. Okay. I had nothing to do with harder. I started as Internet Motorola Semiconductor at the time working on algorithms for eda, uh, tools. And after a year or so I think there was like very interesting problem that one of the colleagues actually uh, brought to my desk and he was asking if I'm willing to work with him on that. And that problem was related uh, to an area called dft. It's uh, designed for testing. It's kind uh, of an area when you're developing test patterns, test, ah, program in order to check the device after um, fabrication. Okay. Just to make sure that the device itself is working as expected. And at the time that was something that was challenging for us. And you know, there was many tools at the time that were addressing this area. But at Motorola at the time it was relatively something new. And we started this kind of um, working with the team, started to work on that, trying to make some progress. And the problem and the challenge was fascinating at the time. And we are the kind of uh, you know, um, part of a very small team that was working on that within Motorola, uh, Israel. So it was really challenging kind of um, um, project. And that was actually the reason for me to shift from, you know, software to hardware. So that, that was like uh, uh, the challenge or the task that made me move from really, you know, focusing on software and moving from moving to hardware. And I love it. I never looked back. So that, that was, you know, uh, the way I started my career. And I started spending uh, like 10 years at uh, Motorola Semiconductor. Then it became free and I work on different project. Uh, you Know, different kind of roles. Uh, actually I had a privilege to do most of uh, uh, you know, the uh, jobs in the semiconductor management like verification and testing and RTL and architecture. Uh, so I was very lucky. And after 10 years I decided that I need something different. Okay. I would like, um, I think that the motivation was to go to a smaller company and try to do something that is a little bit more focused. There is some great value on starting your career with, you know, these. Of a large company that well established and can train you and can give you in. There are some experts in these companies. Uh, and you learn a lot.

Speaker B: Learn a lot, yeah.

Speaker C: After like few years, if, if you have the passion and would like, you know, to take yourself to the next step, it might be a clever move to try something else. And at least that was my uh, uh, uh, thought at the time. And I decided to move to uh, EasyChip. And EasyChip is a great Israeli company, uh, with great people, very talented, that develop network processors. Um, I met there, uh, some of the great, uh, professional that I know today. And actually, uh, we started like a new project. Okay. Something that is new at the time. So we started like a, uh, new architecture, new project and we work on that for several years. And after that, after like few years of working on that and that was really challenging, we actually started from scratch, uh, together with, uh, two of my friends at EasyChip. We actually decided, you know, we actually Mellanox, um, decided to acquire EasyChip and then we just came back to be as part of a large company. So I, I left a large company in order to work on a more like, uh, startup, uh, kind of an atmosphere. But I ended up with again large company. So I decided that I want to keep my journey. Okay. And work on something else. And so I left and decided that I want to work on infrastructure for cloud. And together with my friends Guy Korean and Eric Shazaf, which are a great professional and work with me on that. Um, together we established, we founded Excite. And it was also kind of a journey because we thought what would be the right product and what should we do and how we can make it right. Right. And the cloud just started and we understood that we need to do something in this area and we need to work on infrastructure for networking infrastructure, of course, uh, for the cloud. And then we met Avigdo Willins, who is, um, long term, one of the best entrepreneurs in the industry. Uh, he was part of uh, Annapurna Labs and part of Havana and Parcel, blah. And Many, many, many more recently even like a Stellabs. So he, he's really probably the best man that can help you. Uh obviously to fund the company but also uh, to have the right thinking process of what need to be done. And, and the great thing about a Victor is that he's highly technical. So it's not just about you know, helping you on the financial side. He will brainstorm with you on what should be the product. He will give you like very meaningful and powerful feedback and he will share with you his kind of many uh, years of experience and that's really something. That's great. We actually got the best person for us uh, uh, to help us with this journey. So we started with this journey like 2017, uh and it's like eight years that we are in this marathon. Okay. So it's, it's kind uh, of uh, roller coaster like any other startup. Our first product line was the X series which is uh, uh, Switch as it sounds. Okay. X our switch kind of a product line. We started with the X1 which was 25.6 terabit switch and we work on that for uh, several years. And in addition to that we added another product line which is the E series which is our DPU kind of uh, product line. Uh, we just released our first product which is the E1. Okay. So now we're actually having like um, two product line. Okay. I forgot to mention that after the X1, uh, the X1 was not uh, went to production because we have some instability issue related to one of the IP that we bought. So we actually use this as kind of uh, um, software development vehicle to our customers.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, and then we developed the X2 which is a 12.8 Tera switch, fully programmable, implementing 5 nanometer. Uh, and now we're actually having those both product available, both the E1 and the X2. So it's kind of uh, exciting days in Excite when you know, after like eight years we have like two products in the market and we are working with our customers to make sure that uh, this product will go to production on large scale. Uh, so that's it. I think that's um, that's how you

Speaker B: got where you are today. I love.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker B: Perfect. So you know you, you mentioned like, you know you were at a large company, you went to a small company, small company got bought. Which by the way is what happens when you're good at what you do at a small company. Right. Like some, someone wants to buy you so you end up at another large Company, you fat like you, you know, you found your own company, which is amazing and even like more um, inspiring than even just going to like a startup, right? Because you're like, I'm going to do my own startup this time. I'm going to totally control the Destiny, which is awesome. And you're kind of in that kid stage, right? You've done. You're not a baby, you're not a toddler, you're eight years old now. Right? So as you mentioned, it's been a marathon. And what we really like try to talk about in this podcast is all the innovation that you just shared with us. The X1, the X2, the E1. How do you balance that, you know, marathon and not want things done like yesterday, right? Because you have deadlines, you know how long things are going to take, but it's not as, as fast as you want it always.

Speaker C: Because it's never as fast as you want.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: And um, and um, that's kind of interesting questions because you always struggle with, you know, what you need right now. Okay. And what that, you know, you want to happen. And your reality has its own way of surprise you. And is this market, the market that we're operating is very dynamic. So everyone is talking about AI these days, but when we started Excite, no one even knows what AI is. It's that kind of, uh, dynamics in our field. And you need to make sure that you evolve, you need to make sure, uh, uh, that you are actually aligned, uh, that your goals are aligned with your market and more important with customer needs. So one of the things that we learned during the journey is that it's not about, um, specific features, it's not about specific product, it's not about specific anything. It's about a team that can, I think, tolerate some significant changes flexible enough to make sure that the product will meet the customer needs at the end of the road with all the challenges of that, everything is moving around. Okay. So it's, it's required a lot of kind of, uh, persistence. Okay. It's, it's, I'm, um, we have like the best team in the world. Uh, you know, people that are fully committed to the company, to the products. Uh, which means also that we have very unique, I would say, uh, culture in Excite. So the DNA of the company is, is something that we would like, make sure that we are creating the best and, and, and the best product in, in, in the world want to make sure that our customers gets the best customer experience. And that means that, you know, you Cannot build it in a day. Okay. And you make mistakes. Of course we are making mistakes and we are fixing. So it's, it's about looking at what you are doing. It's about understanding what went great and what not so great and change and adapt and, and make sure that ah, you evolve and you improve all the time. So this is kind of a journey of constant improvement.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. And it's so true. Like I always use the expression fail forward. You know what I mean? Like not, not like failing and being like oh, that didn't work, we're done. But like failing and learning from m it and then taking the next step to fix it and even make it better sometimes. Right. And, and when you were talking about, you know I totally. It's fascinating when you were talking about AI and like you know, eight years ago it of course existed even though people like to pretend that it didn't. But that's another story. But uh, you know, it wasn't as prominent as it is today. So like how in your innovation do you keep up with what the market is doing around you while you're developing your products? Like do you have a process for that with your team? Like how do you, you manage that as you work on new things?

Speaker C: Yeah, so that, that's one of the challenges because always you have kind of a new applications and new demands and things like that. So one of the things that we're doing in excited that we decided that our products are going to be like software defined because we understand that when everything moves you cannot come up with a new product every six months. Okay. Yeah, it's silicon kind of uh, development, it's a long process. Uh, you know, advanced nodes even take a bit time than you know, previous generations. So it's not getting you know uh, uh, uh, it's getting a lot of, it's getting much more time these days. Okay. To be able to come with a product, with a silicon product to the market. So we uh, decided to take a different approach and said okay, so part of the device must be programmable in a way that we'll be able to adapt. Okay. So our X1 and X2 devices are ah, fully programmable in a way that you know when the Ultra Internet Consortium came up with their new kind of uh, um, AI related, I would say scheme for handling congestion and things like that. I'll not put too much technical details into that but they come up with uh, there is the need to address the AI network in a different way than traditional network because you need to get more from your network in order to make sure that your very expensive GPU are uh, 100% utilized and uh, great people, they're working on that. Uh but you know it's, it's, it takes some times. Okay. And we're still learning and I believe that the fact that our product is programmable help us to adapt those ideas and those algorithms uh, and those concept much faster than you know trying to implement this in, in hardware and that we are actually uh, that's enable us to provide our customers solution right now and not waiting like two or three years to the next generation. The same goes for our dpu. Uh we decided to go with again fully software defined DPU which is based on 64 Omniverse N2 processors and bunch of accelerators and everything. The programming model is the standard Linux and things that any programmer knows. And I think that's really helping us because it's not just about the speeds and feed. We definitely support the best feed and feed and our DPU is the best in markets and the first to market with 800 gig DPU. So we have the speeds and feed but we also provide on top of it programmability and we believe this is a uh, huge added value to our customers and we actually use it quite massively these days and both for our DPU and our switch. And we also decided to open our instruction set in the switch, we call it Excisa actually to share with the community what we are doing and to let them program themselves. So that's something that actually it took us more time to develop it. It's uh, more challenging but uh, we believe that this is the right way moving forward.

Speaker B: I love that. And so your philosophy is more on like building it correctly upfront versus speeding through it and getting an outcome but having to fix it later on. Right. Like being able to. Is that what you were saying?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's not about fixing, it's about the ability to keep up the pace with the speed of the market and we have like great innovators in this market and it's evolving very very fast and you need to keep up with the pace and software is the only way that you can keep up with the pace. And you just need to make sure that you provide the speeds and feeds and the power and the latency and we manage to get all of this and still provide highly programmable devices for our customers.

Speaker B: Just a few things to think about. Just a few. It's a lot going on. You touched a little bit on, on your Team. Right. And like being able to assemble what I would call an a team of innovators. When you built this company, how do you think like that has affected just the company and the culture? And you mentioned the DNA as it goes forward. Like being able to put together, you know, the best innovators in the world to, to build a company and products together versus you know, being put with a team like you would be at a larger company.

Speaker C: It's, it's simple word. It's all about the people. Mhm. Start with the people and end with the people. If you have the right people with the right talent, with the right approach, uh, you can do, you know, the sky is, is not the limit. Okay. So uh, it's, it's, it's simple as that. And, and I think that I know this for many years but I also learned this also from a victor that keep telling us, you know, changing is not a problem. It's, it's part of being, doing what we are doing. It's part of evolving. It, it's part of innovative. You cannot innovate without moving. You cannot innovate without changing. Uh, if you would like to do real innovation, you should be prepared to move and move a lot and change and adapt. And you need to have the right team for doing that. And my grateful for having like you know, the team that we have uh, in excite that actually you know uh, working with us along this eight years of a journey that we are working on this uh, products and that's uh, you know that's great. That's the real secret of having like a successful company. Honestly.

Speaker B: Yeah. Do you think that everyone in your company and maybe the founders or everyone now is like really focus has that innovator mindset? Do you think they learn that when they come to excite, like do you think they come in with that mindset? I'm just curious, like I uh think

Speaker C: the founding team definitely has like put innovation uh, as you know one of the major things that uh this company will focus on. But I think then we created kind of the DNA, the culture of the company, uh, that I think that even like the newcomers are now contributing, contribute a lot because we are open for any, for ideas. We are open you know, to have like uh, to go and try different things that other did not try. So it's kind of uh, culture that you know, if you have something interesting to say, if you can impact about the product, if you believe that we can do something different and actually ended up with a positive impact on the Customers, definitely we are willing to hear and it's not just, you know, from the smartest guy in the room, it's from everyone that just joined, you know, uh, uh, the company even yesterday. Okay. So everyone has like a place around the table and everyone can say if you believe you can do things better. So that's part of being open for innovation, because innovation, it means that you need to be open. And we actually took this approach and this is also the approach that we are taking with the customer. So that's trying to link it back to the fact that we decided to go open with our open instructions and open software and everything. It's all connected. Okay. So we would like, and we really like working, working in open kind of environment when you know, the technology wins. And we would like our customers to choose us because of our technology. And we want them to be able to explore our technology and adapt, you know, the solution to their specific needs. And this is the reason why we believe that uh, we should take this kind of open approach from our DNA, from our culture within Excite, also to the customers.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Do you find that your customers and people, well, potential customers are, are innovative too? Like you mostly connect with those kind of customers.

Speaker C: Is that like, you know, that's, that's, that's interesting question because sometimes even, you know, surprised by the level of innovations that our uh, customer able to do with our product. So sometimes a customer would like to come with, you know, specific. He had something, a solution, you know, in his mind and then he let more about our technology and he ended up with coming with totally different algorithm and totally different implementation, which is much better of course, and much better in power, performance or whatever. So it's always fascinating to see what customers can do with your technology. So you're getting to the part when your baby is actually going to the world and then you have no control anymore. Right. And when you have no controls, uh, sometimes you can see so many great things that the customer actually takes your product to a different, uh, uh, application and address it from different angles. And we actually see even kind of uh, synergy between our products. So some of the customers will take both the AX2 and the E1 and it will build like a unified uh, system with both of them and then, you know, come up with your own innovation. So that's kind of the things that I really like to see how customer innovate based on our technology.

Speaker B: I love that. So cool. I just echoed there. I don't know what's going on. Can you hear an echo?

Speaker C: I don't hear an echo.

Speaker B: Oh, I just heard a weird echo. Okay, let me start that over momentarily,

Speaker C: but we will cut that out.

Speaker B: Okay. Sorry. I don't understand why that just happened. Anyway. Okay. Um, that is so cool. It must be. Let me start that over. That is so cool. It must be like, super awesome to see, you know, to your point, your baby and your infant and now your child out in the world being able to do things that you had ideas for it, but it's now kind of going beyond those ideas. Right. When you work with innovative customers, are there, you know, like, people that really inspired you along your journey to this point? From big company to, you know, entrepreneur and, you know, to. You guys are a 200 person company now. That's, that's big and growing, which is really exciting.

Speaker C: There are many people that inspire you along the way. Uh, I'm sure. And this is actually building your, you know, it's, it's part of who you are. Uh, but I must say that I learned a lot from Avigdo, our chairman, like, you know, going with us for the last eight years. And he's so knowledgeable and has so many experience that. But anytime I talk with him, I learn something new. So it really was a pleasure working with him and it's kind of his keep being involved in the company and keep giving his insights. It's great.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah. Well, this was an awesome conversation. I loved learning about your journey and Excite and I wish you guys lots of luck in the future as you continue to build all of these amazing products.

Speaker C: Thank you so much, Gillian. It was a pleasure, uh, talking with you today.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks to Gal for showing how vision and persistence shaped the future of connected tech. Learn more about X Sight labs@xsight labs.com if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Innovators of Things wherever you get your podcasts and share it with someone who's ready to think differently about growth and innovation. Until next time,