We meet again: Redpanda’s FY26 company kick-off

Every year, we round up our pandas worldwide for a few days of insights, inspiration, and a generous dose of fun. For our FY25 company kick-off (CKO), the Redpanda pack descended on The Wigwam in Arizona. In FY26, we returned to Arizona once again with a whole new set of sessions, activities, and incredible swag. 

With a hybrid event, pandas could come and play in person or attend virtually and get inspired from home. However they chose to join, this CKO was uniquely designed to bring out all our best qualities and get everyone excited for the year ahead. 

If you missed it or just want to peek inside life at Redpanda, here’s what happened at our FY26 CKO.   

Charting wins and mapping the future 

After a warm welcome to everyone in the room and an upbeat hello to those watching the livestream from home, our Founding Panda, Alex Gallego, walked us through Redpanda’s vision — who we want to be as a company and how we’re going to get there.

“The future will no longer be about battling batch and streaming. You’ll need a system to glue the past and present, integrating data from analytics to operations and beyond. That’s where Redpanda comes in.”

Armed with facts, stats, and cowboy-themed pandas, leaders from each team then took the stage to showcase achievements, celebrate top performers, and present the exciting roadmap ahead. Each keynote emphasized Redpanda’s north star: strategy, consistency, and running in the right direction as a team.

“It takes a whole company to deliver new capabilities and make customers successful.” - Brian Schwarz, VP of Product.

We were also reminded of the tremendous progress we achieved in the last 12 months. Most notably, we delivered:

• Redpanda Connect with 280+ connectors to power any real-time data and AI pipelines 
• Redpanda Serverless to make it faster and easier than ever to stream data 
• Serverless Pro with higher performance and world-class support for the enterprise
• A 99.99% SLA uptime guarantee on Redpanda BYOC and Dedicated 
• An expanded number of cloud regions and larger tier sizes
• Write Caching for up to 90% better performance and improved efficiency
• Leader Pinning to lower networking costs and latencies
• ‍Mountable Topics to save on resources for unused topics

As Alex put it, we’re already changing how the world is being built. Now it’s time to focus on our strengths and simply make them unbeatable. 

Our Prime Directive: Listen to customers

The best way to help our customers win is by listening to their side of the story. What are we doing right, and how can we do better? So, our Senior Director of Global Customer Success and CKO host, Tristan Stevens, hopped on stage rocking his Nike Red Pandas (not sponsored) to introduce valued customers and even a Redpanda board member for curious new insights.

First was Leyla Mousavi, Chief Architect at Johnson Controls, a manufacturing company that designs and develops HVAC and security equipment for buildings. With mountains of data flowing in real-time for alerts and smart building automation, having a solid streaming data platform was crucial.

Leyla walked us through the challenges of their previously complex and costly architecture, and the surprising simplicity of migrating to Redpanda. After successfully going to production in one region, it was proof enough to deploy Redpanda in the US, Canada, EU, and Middle East. Their computing costs plummeted, their reliability skyrocketed, and their customer complaints dropped to zero.

Next was Kannan Dorairaj, Chief Architect at LiveRamp, who joined us virtually to talk about the SaaS company’s architectural shift from batch to streaming, which was no small feat considering they dealt with 100 TB of data. With Redpanda supporting billions of daily syncs from thousands of data sources, LiveRamp enjoys less complexity, lower costs, and happier engineers. He concluded,

“Everybody can solve problems, but Redpanda’s core difference is a smaller footprint, the underlying architecture, and being a trusted partner that solves problems differently.”

The third customer spotlight featured the principal software engineer at a multi-national automotive and clean energy company. He spoke about their mission to “do more with less” and his team’s obsession with observability, which perfectly complemented Redpanda’s own obsession with reliability and resource efficiency. 

“Google’s global monitoring system uses tens of thousands of machines, whereas we use 35 machines with Redpanda.”

As a company that measures its downtime in dollars, he also praised the confidence Redpanda inspires as a platform — even at massive scale. “We bank on correctness and consistency,” he said. “Redpanda delivers those in spades.” As a result, the company plans on replacing all of its Apache Kafka^® infrastructure with Redpanda.

His recommendation for our team? Stay obsessed.

Lastly, Alex sat with Simon Parmett, an independent board member, for a fireside chat about Redpanda's future. 

This chat went beyond strategy and funding. Instead, Simon explained how he was invested in Redpanda’s vibrant company culture just as much as in its product. He recognized the rare combination of values, beliefs, and behaviors embedded in every panda, from engineering to leadership. 

“Redpanda has phenomenal integrity, charisma, commitment, and, most importantly: humility.”

He closed his session by congratulating Redpanda for encouraging an environment where every employee has the freedom to be authentic — not just with teammates but also with customers. Perhaps that’s why Tristan assures our level of care and support is “the envy of the data streaming world.”

Teamwork: The final frontier

To round up Redpanda’s best values, this year's Base Camp Games focused on a series of activities that required each team to work together. This time, the goal wasn’t to earn points (or trip up a competing panda) but to emphasize the value of leaning on our fellow pandas.    

Although this exercise wasn’t just a chance for us to learn – but also to give back. As the guides and beneficiaries of the “Redpanda Rodeo,” we were joined by The H.E.A.R.T. Center, a non-profit that combines horses and recreation as a therapeutic learning opportunity for students with developmental disabilities.

From solving riddles and learning to lasso to guiding blindfolded pandas through a maze of objects, the Redpanda Rodeo challenged us in unexpected ways and underlined the value of trusting our team. (We also learned not to compete with Alex at a timed rodeo race.)

Set phasers to fun

While much of CKO is dedicated to sharpening the company focus, there’s no understating the importance of broadening personal connections through play.

With three days packed with sessions and activities, our pandas deserved to switch off and enjoy a bit of downtime. Some started running clubs at sunrise, others explored the desert or tried their luck at the casinos, while a few competed on the golf course. Naturally, a good number stayed at the resort and kept the bartenders on their toes.

Every evening, all pandas reconvened for dinner and dessert, followed by a few hours of lawn games, chats around the fire pit, and even some stargazing with guest astronomers.

On the final night, everyone dressed in their finest cowboy attire for the “Redpanda Hoedown” — a happy hour with good music and plenty of themed activities.

As our third CKO came to a close, we left Arizona with new connections, renewed perspectives, and a clear path forward as a company. (Not to mention paws full of swag.) 

If we were to summarize the essence of this year’s event, Evan Atkinson — our People Experience Manager and CKO organizer — says it best, 

“CKO is about the people. When we come together, it’s a reminder that all of the work we’re doing is done by some pretty amazing humans. We enjoy a lot of flexibility being a fully remote company, but while we’re at CKO, we’re all working from the same big office. It’s a pretty special experience.”

To the stars and beyond

With phenomenal shifts across the data streaming universe, this CKO allowed us to step back and look at the bigger picture. It was a place to celebrate wins, review challenges, and set a course for success. It was also a chance to reconnect with teammates, introduce ourselves to new ones, and create moments that remind us why we’re proud to be Redpandas. 

After another record-breaking financial year and an ambitious roadmap ahead, we’re fully engaged and ready to make it happen.

We’d say the sky's the limit, but we’re aiming for the moon. 

In the meantime, check what’s new with Redpanda and catch up on our latest announcements. If you want to get involved, browse Redpanda Careers and join our crew as we build the future of data streaming.