After Two Decades at Intel, Ravi Sahita Is Redefining Hardware Security at Rivos

After more than two decades at the same company, Ravi Sahita was ready to push himself in a new direction. 

He had built an impressive career at Intel, where he led key efforts in platform and CPU-level security. But when he spoke with the founders of Rivos, the decision became easy. Their bold vision, critical inflection point, and caliber of the team being assembled made the opportunity stand out. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, Ravi also saw the move as a chance to scratch a long-standing itch to build something from the ground up. 

Ravi joined Rivos in August 2021 as the Principal Platform Security Architect, the first security hire for Rivos and for Rivos Portland. He focuses on foundational product security, confidential computing, and application hardening. He also leads an experienced team of hardware and software security engineers, and their work spans to secure the full computational stack: from building a trusted Root of Trust engine into the system-on-chip, to enabling secure boot capabilities, to designing trusted computing environments that protect customer data in all phases of its lifecycle.

Before Rivos, Ravi spent over two decades at Intel, where he gradually moved from network and platform-level security into CPU-level features. His work culminated in the launch of Intel’s confidential VM computing technology for servers now deployed across major cloud providers like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. At Intel, Ravi was a recipient of the coveted Intel Achievement Award and filed over 200 patents.

Since joining Rivos, Ravi has embraced the startup pace. “The speed at which we make decisions is refreshing,” he said. His day-to-day swings between architecture, design work with his team, and debugging. In earlier phases, Ravi and his team worked closely on emulation and simulation to validate designs before hardware was manufactured. Now, as Rivos scales, he and his team are focused on ensuring the security features are robust, production-ready, and future-proof for Rivos customers.

Ravi also values the culture of openness and collaboration. “There’s no red tape here,” he explained. “We all have a common mission here that everybody’s working towards.”

Outside of work, Ravi enjoys spending time with his family. He enjoys hiking, reading, music, and playing pickleball.