Jayshree V. Ullal is a successful person in the world of technology. She is not like big names in tech because she does things quietly and gets great results. As the person in charge of Arista Networks, Jayshree V. Ullal has changed the way companies use cloud networking. She is also the business leader in the world who is originally from India. Jayshree V. Ullal is even richer, than Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella according to the Hurun India Rich List 2025. Jayshree V. Ullal has really made a name for herself in the tech world.
Ullal has been working for over thirty years. Her career is very special because she is good at engineering. She can also plan for the future. Ullal is a leader. She started by making fast memory chips. Now she is in charge of a very big company that uses artificial intelligence for networking. The story of Ullal is about being strong being smart and being successful without seeking a lot of attention. Ullals story is really about Ullal being resilient having a lot of intellect and being very good, at what Ullal does.
Early Life: Born in Britain, Raised in India
Jayshree V. Ullal was born on March 27 1961 in London into a Hindu family of origin. She was born in London. Jayshree V. Ullal spent her early years in New Delhi. This is where Jayshree V. Ullal grew up. Jayshree V. Ullal was really connected to culture and the values of Indian culture and she got a good education in New Delhi. Jayshree V. Ullal learned a lot, about culture and Jayshree V. Ullal liked it.
Her father was part of Indias Ministry of Education. He did some important work that helped create the Indian Institutes of Technology also known as the IITs. The Indian Institutes of Technology are well known. This had an impact on her life. It helped her become interested, in engineering and leadership. The Indian Institutes of Technology played a role in this.
Ullal went to the Convent of Jesus and Mary in New Delhi. This school is well known, for being tough and teaching kids a lot. When Ullal was a kid she really liked math and science. She liked these subjects much that they became a big part of what she did when she grew up and started working. Ullal liked math and science a lot. That is what she wanted to do.
Education: Building an Engineering Foundation in the US
Ullal finished her school in India. Then she moved to the United States for education. Ullal went to San Francisco State University. At San Francisco State University Ullal studied for a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. She graduated from San Francisco State University in 1981 with a degree in Electrical Engineering, from San Francisco State University.
She wanted to be good at technology and also be a leader. So she got a Master of Science in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University in 1986. Years later Santa Clara University gave her an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering in 2025 because of her great work in technology and industry. She got this award from Santa Clara University because of what she did, for technology and industry.
Early Career: Learning the Fundamentals of Silicon Valley
Ullals professional journey started in Silicon Valley at Fairchild Semiconductor. This is where Ullal worked as a strategic development engineer. Ullal later joined Advanced Micro Devices, which is also known as AMD. At AMD Ullal designed high speed memory chips for companies, like IBM and Hitachi.
These early jobs taught her a lot about the inside of computers how tiny chips are made and how big systems work. This background in hardware and systems is not something you see every day, in people who only have business experience. It is a foundation that would later set her apart from many other executives who only know about business.
In 1988 Ullal joined Ungermann-Bass, a company that makes networking equipment. This is where Ullal started to move from just doing engineering work. She became the Director of the Internetworking Business Unit at Ungermann-Bass. This was a change for Ullal as she started to focus on leadership and strategy instead of just engineering. Ullal was now, in a position where she had to make decisions and plan for the future of Ungermann-Bass.
Pioneering Network Switching at Crescendo Communications
A big part of Ullals career started in 1992, when she became the Vice President of Marketing at Crescendo Communications. This company made products for something called Fiber Distributed Data Interface networking, which is also known as FDDI. Ullal was now a person at Crescendo Communications helping them with marketing, for their FDDI networking products.
At Cresceno Ullal played an important part in:
• Developing 100-Mbit/s Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI)
• Advancing first-generation Ethernet switching
• Shaping early enterprise networking architectures
This work put her in the middle of a big change in technology that was going to change the way data centers all, around the world worked. Data centers were going to be very different because of this change. The change was going to affect data centers.
Cisco Years: Scaling Innovation to Billions
In 1993 Cisco Systems bought a company called Crescendo Communications. This was the time Cisco Systems had bought another company. It was also the moment Cisco Systems got into the switching market. When this happened Ullal started working at Cisco Systems. This was one of the important parts of her career at Cisco Systems. She was, with Cisco Systems now.
She was an important person who helped create the Cisco Catalyst switching business. This business started from nothing. Became a huge company worth $5 billion by the year 2000. Over the 15 years Ullal moved up the ladder at Cisco. She became the Senior Vice President of the Data Center Switching and Security Technology Group at Cisco. Ullal played a role, in the Cisco Catalyst switching business and the company overall.
At Cisco, she:
- Oversaw LAN switching, data center networking, and virtualization services
- Drove strategic initiatives in IP telephony, unified communications, and content networking
- Managed businesses generating over $10–15 billion in direct and indirect revenue
- Led or integrated more than 20 enterprise-focused mergers and acquisitions
Her tenure at Cisco established her reputation as one of the most capable operational leaders in the networking industry.
Arista Networks: A Leap of Vision and Courage
In October 2008 Ullal made a decision. She left Cisco to join Arista Networks, which was a company at that time with less, than 30 people working for Arista Networks. Arista Networks was operating from the basement of a law firm.
Arista was started by Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton. They wanted Arista to change the way people think about networking. Arista was going to use ideas from cloud computing and apply them to computer centers that companies use. Then Ullal became the CEO and President of Arista. Her job was to make the ideas of Arista a real thing.
Under her leadership, Arista:
• Introduced software-driven cloud networking
• Enabled 10/25/40/50/100/400/800 Gigabit Ethernet
• Disrupted legacy vendors with scalable, low-latency architectures
• These things have become really important for Artificial Intelligence, huge cloud systems and lots of data- workloads. Artificial Intelligence and huge cloud systems and data-intensive workloads really need them to function properly.
In June 2014 Ullal took Arista to the New York Stock Exchange. They had a very successful initial public offering with the stock symbol ANET. This was a big deal for Arista. It was a milestone that changed Arista into a global powerhouse. Ullal and Arista did something special that year. Arista became a player in the world because of this successful initial public offering, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Legal Battles and Strategic Resilience
One of the most challenging moments of Ullal’s Arista tenure came during a prolonged patent infringement dispute with Cisco, her former employer. The case spanned several years and attracted intense industry scrutiny.
In August 2018, Arista settled the dispute by agreeing to pay $400 million to Cisco. Rather than weakening the company, the settlement marked a turning point—allowing Arista to refocus entirely on innovation, AI-driven networking, and global expansion.
Wealth, Rankings, and Global Recognition
By 2025, Ullal’s leadership had translated into extraordinary personal success. According to Forbes, her net worth reached approximately $5.7 billion, driven largely by Arista’s stock performance amid the AI and cloud computing boom.
Key highlights:
- Owns nearly 3–5% of Arista Networks
- Ranked #1 on Hurun India Rich List 2025 among Indian-origin leaders
- Surpassed Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella in personal wealth
- Ranked 713th globally by net worth
Her rise reflects not speculation, but long-term value creation rooted in technology fundamentals.
Awards and Honors
Ullal’s influence has been widely recognized across global platforms, including:
- Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2015)
- Barron’s World’s Best CEOs (2018, 2019)
- Fortune Top 20 Business Persons (2019)
- Forbes America’s Richest Self-Made Women
- ET Global Indian Award (2023)
- Banyan Tree Award (2024)
- Silicon Valley Power 100 (2023 & 2025)
She has also served on the boards of Zscaler and Snowflake Inc., influencing cybersecurity and data cloud ecosystems.
Personal Life: Grounded Amid Global Success
Despite her immense success, Ullal maintains a low-profile personal life. She is married to Vijay Ullal, a former president and COO of Fairchild Semiconductor and now a venture capitalist. The couple has two daughters and resides in Saratoga, California.
She is also the sister of the late Susie Nagpal, a Saratoga City Councilwoman, and remains closely connected to her extended family.
Legacy: Power Without Noise
Jayshree V. Ullal represents a rare archetype in global business—an engineer-CEO who built influence not through spectacle, but through sustained excellence. At a time when AI, cloud computing, and data centers define the future, her leadership at Arista Networks places her at the very core of modern digital infrastructure.