Recognition underscores the company’s rapid growth, employee satisfaction and innovation building a data infrastructure for AI at global scale
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — March 3, 2026 — Hammerspace, the high-performance data platform designed to power AI anywhere, today announced it has been named to the Forbes 2026 America’s Best Startup Employers list, placing the company in the top 14 percent of startups nationwide. The award recognizes the top 500 startup employers in the United States based on employer reputation, employee satisfaction and company growth.
To create the annual ranking, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to evaluate privately held U.S. companies founded between 2016 and 2023 with at least 50 employees. America’s Best Startup Employers 2026 identified the top-performing startups in the United States by analyzing a defined set of KPIs that correspond to company growth and workplace satisfaction. After gathering more than seven million data points from over 20,000 eligible companies, 2,700 employers qualified for in-depth analysis. In the end, 500 employers were included in the ranking. Each employer’s final evaluation was based on three key criteria: Employer Reputation, Employee Satisfaction, and Company Growth.
Founded in 2018 by storage pioneer David Flynn, Hammerspace has grown to more than 200 employees worldwide, with its headquarters in California and offices in the United Kingdom, France, and Singapore. The company is backed by strategic investors including Altimeter Capital, ARK Invest and SK Square, bringing deep expertise across AI, cloud infrastructure and global technology markets.
“This recognition reflects the exceptional people who make up the Hammerspace team,” said Flynn. “We’ve built a culture that attracts engineers and innovators who want to solve some of the hardest data challenges in AI and high-performance computing. Many of our team members have helped shape the core technologies behind modern data infrastructure, and it’s their expertise, collaboration and curiosity that continue to drive our growth and innovation.”
Hammerspace’s engineering leadership includes many of the individuals responsible for designing the core technologies that power modern Linux storage, network file systems and enterprise data infrastructure.
Among them:
- David Flynn — founder and CEO of Hammerspace, and widely credited with pioneering enterprise flash storage while leading Fusion-io. His early architectural work influenced the development of NVMe, the interface that defines modern high-performance flash storage.
- Trond Myklebust — principal maintainer of the Linux NFS client and a core contributor to the Linux kernel for more than two decades.
- Mike Bloom — AI systems architect focused on data platforms for LLM builders, neocloud providers and enterprise GenAI infrastructure.
- Tom Haynes — co-author of the NFSv4.2 protocol, a foundational standard for modern distributed file systems.
- Brian Pawlowski — co-architect of NFSv3 and a pioneer in enterprise NAS architecture.
- Mike Snitzer — core developer of the Linux block storage stack, whose work underpins many of today’s enterprise storage systems.
Together, the team represents decades of foundational work in the technologies that today’s AI infrastructure relies on, from Linux kernel storage subsystems to global distributed file systems.
As demand accelerates for infrastructure capable of supporting large-scale AI workloads, Hammerspace continues to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams globally. Current open positions are available on the Hammerspace Careers page.
Learn More
- Blog Post: Why SK Square Invested in Hammerspace: Data Orchestration for AI at Global + Sovereign Scale
- Blog Post: The SSD Reckoning
- Data Unchained Podcast: The Infrastructure Revolution for AI Factories with David Flynn
- White Paper: Hammerspace Data Platform
- Blog Post: Hammerspace Data Platform v5.2 Is Now GA And It Quietly Changes What’s Possible
About Hammerspace
Hammerspace is the high-performance data platform built to simplify AI infrastructure at scale. It makes all your data immediately accessible — anywhere across on-premises and cloud environments — without copying or migrating data. By integrating with existing storage, networking, and applications, Hammerspace creates a unified, high-speed data backbone for AI, enabling organizations to accelerate every stage of the AI pipeline while eliminating data silos. Learn more at https://hammerspace.com.
Hammerspace and the Hammerspace logo are trademarks of Hammerspace, Inc. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
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