TrueNAS Appoints Brett Davis as CEO to Accelerate Partner-Led Growth and Enterprise Scale

TrueNAS, the enterprise storage platform trusted by more than 60% of the Fortune 500, today announced that Brett Davis has been appointed CEO.The appointment comes at a critical inflection point for enterprise storage. Rising infrastructure costs – driven by memory-intensive AI workloads and expanding data volumes – are shifting storage from a tactical IT decision to a strategic financial conversation involving CFOs and executive leadership.

Organizations are increasingly seeking alternatives to traditional vendors whose economics and architectural rigidity no longer align with long-term business needs. Davis will lead TrueNAS in addressing this market shift by delivering what legacy platforms cannot: predictable storage economics, lifecycle control without lock-in, and adaptable infrastructure that supports both current production workloads and emerging AI use cases on a single unified platform.

Davis brings more than twenty years of leadership experience at TrueNAS, where he has held executive responsibility across sales, marketing, and product, most recently serving as Executive Vice president. He has played a central role in scaling the business and establishing TrueNAS as a trusted data platform for mission-critical workloads across media, technology, healthcare, research, government, and enterprise IT.

“Brett has been instrumental in building the TrueNAS business into what it is today,” said Mike Lauth, founder and outgoing CEO, TrueNAS. “He understands the enterprise market, our partners, and the operational discipline required to scale a platform responsibly. This transition reflects both confidence in our strategy and the market opportunity ahead. Brett is the right leader to help our customers and partners navigate this inflection point in enterprise storage.”

As CEO, Davis will focus on expanding partner-led growth while reinforcing the TrueNAS core value proposition: adaptable, high-performance enterprise storage with predictable economics, hybrid efficiency, and long-term lifecycle control.

“We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how enterprises evaluate storage,” said Davis. “It’s no longer just about performance specs or feature lists – it’s about total economic impact, architectural flexibility, and long-term control. CFOs are asking harder questions about subscription lock-in, upgrade cycles, and vendor dependence. CIOs need infrastructure that can adapt to AI workloads without wholesale replacement. TrueNAS was built precisely for this moment: a single storage platform that delivers performance with predictable economics and the freedom to evolve on your own terms, not your vendor’s roadmap. No other storage platform is better positioned to help customers navigate the new storage market dynamics.”

A key differentiator behind TrueNAS’s enterprise storage platform is its open-core development model, supported by the world’s largest storage community and millions of TrueNAS users. This community contributes to large-scale validation, testing, and real-world feedback, strengthening reliability and accelerating innovation. For enterprise customers and partners, this translates into lower risk, more predictable outcomes, higher product quality, and stronger long-term economics.

TrueNAS plans to increase investment in partner enablement and joint go-to-market execution, helping partners deliver greater value to customers while continuing to build durable, profitable practices around the platform.

“Our partners succeed when customers see clear economic and operational advantages,” said Davis. “By combining a robust enterprise storage platform with the scale and validation of our community, we give partners a foundation they can trust and grow with.”

The leadership transition reinforces TrueNAS’s mission to deliver an adaptable enterprise storage platform that balances performance, economics, and control without lock-in.