Why Partner Leaders Must Master the AI Landscape to Win Hyperscaler Partnerships with Alan Chhabra

Data no longer is the center of the landscape for selling tech. And I was trying to figure out what was the center. And I go back to the analogy of the gold rush, right? long time ago when people were traveling out west, they were looking for gold. Was gold the center of that era? Or were the people that were selling the pans and the shovels, you know, the whatever, the axes to hit the, right, the picks and axes, were they the center? And I'm like, you know what? That's the center.

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Welcome back to the Revenue Builders Podcast. Today, we're talking about one of the most critical and definitely often most misunderstood levers for hypergrowth, scaling strategic partner ecosystems. And joining us today is Alan Chhabra. He's the Executive Vice President of Worldwide Partnerships at Cerebras Systems. Alan spent over two decades operating at the center of enterprise tech, direct sales, and global channel strategy. Over a nearly 10-year run at MongoDB, he scaled their global partner network from the ground up, turning hyperscaler alliances and partner channels into a revenue engine that touched, you ready for this, 80% of all new business deals. Prior to MongoDB, he ran a $200 million business at BMC Software. Alan holds both a bachelor's and a master's in engineering from MIT. He's now at Cerebus Systems, the company building the world's fastest AI supercomputing and inference platforms. And he leads their global partner expansion as GenAI redefines the enterprise tech stack. So whether you're trying to align direct sales with partners, build hyperscaler relationships, or navigate revenue leadership in the AI wave, Alan has done it at the highest level. Welcome, Alan Chhabra. Alan, welcome back to the podcast. How are you today?

I'm great, boss. I got two bosses on.

I'm enjoying it already. There you go. Okay, so you left MongoDB, you went to Cerebrus. Tell us a little bit about-

He didn't leave MongoDB, dude. He spread it to Cerebrus.

Okay. All right, you're at Cerebrus. Is that fair? Let me put it into a different context. You're at Cerebrus, and tell us about, give everybody a little overview on Cerebrus, and congratulations on the IPO. Thank you. And tell us a little bit about your responsibility there. And then I'd like to focus on how the landscape in AI has changed for the role that you have at Cerebras.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, thanks for having me on. And it's my second time. So hopefully the first time I did a decent job or you wouldn't have brought me back. So thank you. I mean, I spent 10 years at MongoDB, as you know. And then prior to that, John, I got to learn from you in particular at BMC Software and BladeLogic. And Mongo was a phenomenal run. I got to learn from people like David Techeria, Chip Hazard, Cedric Pesch. And when I was