Seattle data governance startup Codified is ‘winding down’ as CEO takes on new role at Google

Codified, a Seattle startup that helps companies control who can access their data in AI-driven systems, is “winding down” according to the founder and former CEO.

Yatharth Gupta shared the update with GeekWire, but declined to provide any further details.

Gupta recently started a new position as a director of product management at Google in Kirkland, Wash.

“New beginnings! & also I’m hiring!” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn last week.

Founded in 2023 after being incubated at Madrona Venture Labs, Codified raised a $4 million seed round in February 2024 led by Madrona Venture Group and Vine Ventures, with participation from Soma Capital. Former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia also invested in the startup, along with SAP exec and former Microsoft VP JG Chirapurath, and Shireesh Thota, vice president of databases at Microsoft.

Codified is described as an end-to-end data governance operating system. It uses generative AI to let users create data access rules by simply writing the policies in plain English.

The idea is to help companies speed up and improve how they decide who has access to what data, for what reason, and for how long.

Gupta spent more than 14 years at Microsoft, where he helped lead Azure-related data access and management projects. More recently he was a senior vice president of product management at enterprise database company SingleStore.

Other execs at Codified included Stefan Batres, former director of engineering at Tableau Software, who is now at Atlan; and Karan Thakker, former senior software engineer at ExtraHop and Alation, who is now back at ExtraHop.