Sovrn is turning up the volume on its tech ambitions. The publisher-focused ad and commerce platform has named Jud Valeski as its new Chief Technology Officer—an industry veteran with a track record of scaling high-impact data platforms through major exits.
Best known as the co-founder and former CTO of Gnip (acquired by Twitter) and most recently a key exec at Honey (acquired by PayPal for $4B), Valeski joins Sovrn at a time when ad tech is being rapidly reshaped by privacy regulations, generative AI, and the battle over first-party data.
He’ll report directly to CEO Walter Knapp and be based out of the company’s Boulder, Colorado office.
“Jud brings the entrepreneurial, engineering, and data-driven leadership we need in a world where AI is redefining every layer of the open internet,” Knapp said in the company’s announcement.
A CTO with Exit Velocity
Valeski’s résumé reads like a timeline of data-driven innovation. At Gnip, he helped streamline social data access—paving the way for Twitter’s developer and enterprise business. At Honey, he oversaw product and tech strategy just as PayPal eyed next-gen commerce integrations. Earlier stints at Netscape, AOL, and Techstars round out his experience across early web, scale, and startup mentorship.
Now, Sovrn is betting his combined engineering chops and M&A pedigree can fuel its next phase of growth.
“Sovrn has quietly assembled one of the most strategic datasets in the industry—linking attention, identity, and purchases across the open internet,” Valeski said. “My role is to ensure our tech stack scales to meet the next generation of privacy-forward, AI-accelerated advertising and commerce.”
In short: expect Sovrn to lean harder into AI-powered publisher tools and data products that solve for the cookieless future.
A Strategic Move Following a Strong Start to 2025
Valeski’s appointment follows a busy first half of the year for Sovrn. In recent months, the company launched:
- Signal Vitals, a dashboard aimed at helping publishers optimize programmatic ad inventory with clearer health and performance signals.
- Commerce Audiences, a high-intent shopper targeting dataset designed to help advertisers reach buyers across Sovrn’s premium exchange and beyond.
These moves signal Sovrn’s pivot toward more holistic, data-rich publisher tools—part DSP, part SSP, part insight engine.
And that pivot may be paying off. The addition of Brian Monahan—an ad tech vet with experience at Walmart Connect and Initiative—to Sovrn’s board earlier this year suggests the company is sharpening its position in the competitive retail media and commerce data landscape.
Why It Matters
As traditional identifiers fade, platforms with verified consumer attention and purchase data are becoming gold mines. Sovrn’s pitch sits somewhere between The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0 initiative and commerce networks like Amazon Ads—offering publishers ways to retain revenue while helping advertisers find high-quality audiences in the open web.
Adding a CTO like Valeski, who has scaled similar ecosystems, could accelerate Sovrn’s ability to build not just tools but infrastructure.
And infrastructure is exactly what’s needed as ad tech braces for an AI-powered, privacy-constrained internet.
