In 2018, Ilan Atias was one of three co-founders who launched Melio, a payments platform geared toward small and medium-sized U.S. businesses. As the company's CTO, Atias oversees the entire IT department and is responsible for developing, implementing, managing, and evaluating Melio's technology resources. Under his leadership, the fintech startup has seen explosive growth. Following a $250 million Series D round of funding in September 2021, Atias' company was valued at $4 billion. More recently, in May 2022, Melio announced that it was launching international payments to more than 70 countries.
"I am pleased that Melio has reached this milestone . . . which will provide small businesses with more flexibility to expand their pool of suppliers abroad and with room to innovate," said Atias in a prepared statement. "As Melio continues to scale rapidly, we are growing our product and R&D team in order to expand our product offering for small businesses."
As a software engineer, Atias has a proven track record of success. He is especially adept at building and implementing software architecture. In 2000, he graduated magna cum laude from Israel-based Bar-Ilan University with a Bachelor of Science in computer science and physics. He also has a Master of Science in computer science from Tel Aviv University.
He began his career as an algorithmic engineer with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Eventually, he was promoted to head of the research section, where he was responsible for the technology and product research on civilian and non-civilian security solutions, which included penetration tools and hacking. Following his six-year stint with the IDF, Atias was hired as a security architect by Discretix, where he served nearly four years. Prior to launching Melio, Atias was the vice president of R&D for Winward, a position he held from February 2014 to December 2017. His resume also includes nearly six years at Reichman University, the first private university in Israel, where he served as a teaching assistant for courses in cryptography, cyber security, and network security.
Today, Atias's company currently employs more than 400, half of them in Israel and the rest in the company's offices in the U.S. It has headquarters in New York, an R&D center in Tel Aviv, and western U.S. headquarters in Colorado. As one of the big success stories in the world of fintech, Melio and Atias are positioned nicely for the future.