Lambda Labs names Michel Combes as CEO as co-founder Stephen Balaban transitions to CTO
Key Points
- Lambda Labs appoints Michel Combes, former CEO of Sprint and SoftBank International, as CEO while co-founder Stephen Balaban shifts to CTO after 14 years leading the company.
- Combes prioritizes capital formation and securing GPU capacity and data center sites, positioning Lambda to move from leasing to owning and operating infrastructure.
- Lambda targets compute at the lowest cost on flexible terms for model builders and developers, explicitly avoiding foundation model training and API products.
Summary
Read full transcript →Lambda Labs names Michel Combes as CEO
Lambda Labs has appointed Michel Combes as CEO, with co-founder Stephen Balaban stepping into the CTO role after 14 years leading the company. The announcement was made to employees shortly before the pair spoke publicly.
Combes brings a telecom infrastructure background, having previously served as CEO of Sprint and CEO of SoftBank International. He framed his mandate simply: scale. Capital formation is the immediate priority, with the team already being strengthened on that front to support equity and debt raises. The operational goal is securing sites, GPUs, and the operational expertise to assemble them efficiently.
Balaban draws his new role in Oracle-shaped terms, citing Larry Ellison's transition to full-time CTO when Safra Katz and Mark Hurd became Oracle's co-CEOs. His focus stays on product vision, technology direction, and high-velocity engineering, including a push to move Lambda from leasing data center space to owning and operating it.
“I'm Stephen Balaban, co-founder and founding CEO, but now chief technology officer. We've welcomed on Michel Combes as our new chief executive officer, and I'm passing the baton after fourteen years. Michel has a very long history in telecommunication infrastructure — former CEO of Sprint, former CEO of SoftBank International.”
Strategic focus
On the question of scope, both are aligned. Lambda is not chasing foundation model training or API products. The pitch is compute at the lowest cost basis, on the most flexible terms, serving both large model builders like OpenAI and the developer community Balaban describes as Lambda's core constituency. The company's identity, as Balaban frames it, is the developer's cloud, founded by a software engineer and built for people like him.
Combes describes his role as accelerating the platform Balaban built rather than redirecting it.
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