Aman Narang – CEO of Toast

Aman Narang – CEO of Toast

Aman Narang is the Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, and Director of Toast, the technology company that provides an integrated software, payments, hardware, and financial technology platform for restaurants and other food and beverage businesses.

Narang has been closely involved with Toast since its founding in 2011. After years of leading functions including sales, marketing, customer success, business development, operations, and fintech, he became CEO on January 1, 2024, succeeding Chris Comparato.

Under Narang's leadership, Toast has continued expanding from its original restaurant point-of-sale product into a broader operating platform. By the end of 2025, approximately 164,000 locations were using Toast, with those locations processing approximately $195 billion in gross payment volume over the preceding 12 months. Toast reported $6.15 billion in 2025 revenue, up 24% from 2024.

In 2026, Narang has also increasingly positioned artificial intelligence as part of Toast's product strategy. Toast launched products including Toast IQ, its conversational AI assistant, and Toast IQ Grow, which includes an AI agent designed to help restaurants improve their digital presence and generate demand.

Who Is Aman Narang?

Aman Narang is a technology entrepreneur whose career has been centered on building software products around real-world business problems.

Unlike many technology founders who enter an established market with a purely software-first approach, Narang and his Toast co-founders spent their early years working directly with restaurants to understand how operators actually worked.

That customer-first approach became an important part of Toast's development.

Narang co-founded Toast with Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm after the three worked together at Endeca, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based technology company that was acquired by Oracle in 2011. Toast initially explored consumer-facing mobile payments and loyalty before shifting toward restaurant point-of-sale technology.

The company's early operations were famously modest. The founders converted the basement of Narang's home in Burlington, Massachusetts into their first workspace. MIT News reported that the team operated from the basement for approximately nine months while building the product and working closely with early restaurant customers.

That beginning is important to understanding Narang's approach to entrepreneurship: Toast was built by observing a practical problem and repeatedly working with customers to determine what needed to be built.

Aman Narang's Education

Narang studied computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science.

His technical background became particularly relevant as Toast evolved from a startup experimenting with mobile payments into a complex software and payments platform serving restaurants at scale.

Narang's combination of engineering education and product-management experience has remained visible throughout his career. Rather than focusing exclusively on engineering, he moved early into customer-facing and commercial functions, eventually taking responsibility for major parts of Toast's business.

Early Career at Endeca

Before founding Toast, Narang worked in product management at Endeca, a Cambridge-based software company specializing in enterprise search and information access.

Toast's three founders worked together at Endeca before Oracle acquired the company in 2011. Narang's experience there gave him exposure to enterprise software, product development, and the process of turning technical capabilities into products used by businesses.

Toast's founding followed soon afterward.

According to Toast, Narang worked at Endeca in product management and later led the company's mobile business unit.

The Founding of Toast

The original Toast idea came from a familiar restaurant frustration: waiting for a check at the end of a meal.

Narang, Fredette, and Grimm initially considered building a consumer mobile payment application. As they explored the restaurant market, however, they discovered a much broader opportunity.

Restaurants were using fragmented and often outdated technology. Point-of-sale systems, payments, kitchen operations, customer loyalty, employee management, and other functions were frequently handled by separate tools.

The founders eventually decided that instead of simply building another payment application, they could build a modern operating system for restaurants.

Toast was born from that pivot.

Narang has described the company as beginning in his basement, where the founders worked on the early product and interacted directly with restaurants. His experience reinforced a principle that would remain central to Toast: technology should be designed around the actual needs of operators rather than assumptions about what businesses need.

From Restaurant POS to a Broader Platform

Toast's initial focus was point-of-sale technology, but the company's ambitions expanded significantly.

The platform now combines restaurant point of sale with:

• Payments

• Digital ordering

• Delivery

• Marketing

• Loyalty

• Guest engagement

• Payroll and team management

• Restaurant operations

• Financial technology

• Hardware

• Analytics and reporting

• AI-powered tools

This expansion has allowed Toast to build a business model around multiple products and services rather than relying exclusively on POS software.

Narang played a significant role in this evolution long before becoming CEO.

Toast says that during his years as COO, he led or oversaw areas including Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Business Development, Fintech, Operations, and other strategic initiatives.

That broad operating experience helped prepare him for the transition from founder and operator to CEO.

Aman Narang Becomes CEO

Toast announced in September 2023 that Narang would become CEO effective January 1, 2024.

Before becoming CEO, he had served as Toast's Co-President since 2012 and Chief Operating Officer since 2021. He succeeded Chris Comparato, who remained on Toast's board after the leadership transition.

The transition represented a shift from a professional executive-led phase of Toast's development back toward founder leadership.

Toast's board described Narang as a leader who understood the company and its restaurant customers deeply. Narang himself framed the transition around Toast's continuing mission to help restaurants operate, serve guests, and thrive.

As of 2026, Toast's SEC filings identify Narang as Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, and Director.

Toast's Growth Under Narang

Narang inherited a public company that had already undergone substantial growth, but his tenure has continued the expansion.

Toast's 2025 results illustrate the scale of the platform.

At the end of 2025:

• Toast served approximately 164,000 locations

• Locations increased 22% year over year

• Gross payment volume reached approximately $195.1 billion

• Annualized recurring run-rate exceeded $2 billion

• Full-year revenue reached $6.153 billion

• Revenue increased 24% from 2024

• Toast generated $342 million in GAAP net income

• Adjusted EBITDA reached $633 million

Toast also added a record approximately 30,000 net new locations during 2025.

The company continued expanding beyond its traditional U.S. restaurant base into enterprise customers, international markets, and food and beverage retail.

Toast in 2026

Toast entered 2026 with continued growth.

In the first quarter of 2026, Toast reported approximately 171,000 locations, representing 22% year-over-year growth. Gross payment volume reached $51.3 billion, while annualized recurring run-rate increased 26% year over year to approximately $2.2 billion.

Narang described AI as an increasingly important part of the company's product development strategy.

Toast has launched Toast IQ, a conversational AI assistant, as well as Toast IQ Grow, which includes an AI agent intended to help restaurants optimize their digital presence and generate demand.

For Narang, AI is not positioned simply as a standalone technology product. Instead, Toast is incorporating AI into the operating tools restaurants already use.

Aman Narang and AI

AI has become one of the major themes of Narang's current strategy.

Toast's 2025 annual reporting says the company launched more than 500 new features and enhancements during the year, including Toast IQ. The company describes data and artificial intelligence as important tools for differentiating its platform.

This approach fits Toast's broader strategy.

Because Toast sits inside restaurant operations, it has access to data generated across ordering, payments, labor, customer engagement, and other activities. The company's strategy is increasingly focused on using that information to help restaurant operators make decisions and automate parts of their workflow.

In a 2024 interview with Semafor, Narang discussed the potential for AI-enabled restaurants and how Toast could evolve as software becomes more capable. At the time, Toast was already expanding into marketing and AI assistants while serving a rapidly growing restaurant customer base.

A Customer-First Leadership Philosophy

One recurring theme in the Toast story is customer proximity.

The company did not begin with the assumption that its founders understood restaurants better than restaurant operators. Instead, the early team spent significant time observing restaurants and talking directly with owners and employees.

MIT News reported that Toast's founders built numerous features for their earliest customers as they learned what operators actually needed. Over time, those individual customer requirements began to converge into a broader product platform.

Narang has continued to emphasize this relationship.

In a 2024 post shortly after becoming CEO, he wrote about visiting restaurants and speaking with staff, describing customer feedback as an important reminder of the practical impact of Toast's products.

This customer-driven approach is particularly relevant in restaurant technology, where software has to work in fast-moving environments involving staff, guests, payments, kitchens, orders, and daily operational pressures.

Toast's IPO and Public-Company Journey

Toast became a publicly traded company in September 2021.

Its IPO priced shares at $40 per share, and the company raised approximately $944 million in net proceeds after underwriting discounts, commissions, and offering expenses.

The IPO valued Toast at many billions of dollars and transformed the company from a private startup into a major publicly traded technology business.

Narang was not CEO at the time of the IPO, but as a co-founder and senior executive he had already spent roughly a decade helping build the company.

His eventual transition into the CEO role therefore came after years of experience inside the business rather than immediately following the company's public listing.

Toast's Business Model

Toast operates at the intersection of software and financial technology.

Restaurants pay for subscription-based software products, while Toast also generates revenue through payment processing and related financial technology services.

In 2025, financial technology solutions generated approximately $5.04 billion of Toast's $6.15 billion in total revenue, while subscription services generated approximately $936 million.

This model creates a strong connection between Toast's software adoption and payment volume.

As restaurants use more of Toast's platform and process more transactions through it, the company can expand its relationship with existing customers while also increasing the value of its software ecosystem.

Narang's leadership has focused on increasing platform adoption while expanding Toast into additional markets and product categories.

International and Enterprise Expansion

Toast's early success came largely from independent restaurants and smaller restaurant groups in the United States.

The company has since moved further into larger restaurant organizations and international markets.

By 2025, Toast had expanded into Australia, in addition to its existing international presence. Enterprise, international, and food-and-beverage retail businesses had collectively surpassed 10,000 live locations during the year.

This expansion is important because it increases the potential addressable market beyond Toast's original core customer.

Narang has described the company's longer-term opportunity as building a platform capable of serving many multiples of its current locations. Toast's 2025 results announcement stated that the company sees a path toward potentially scaling to $5 billion and $10 billion in ARR over the next decade, although these are management ambitions rather than guaranteed outcomes.

Community and Social Impact

Narang's leadership at Toast also includes a focus on the role restaurants play in local communities.

In 2025, Toast announced a $5 million commitment to fighting food insecurity, including its Toast Changemakers Program, which provided grants to restaurants involved in hunger-related community initiatives.

Toast's corporate responsibility reporting has also highlighted areas such as data privacy and cybersecurity, ethical business conduct, people and culture, environmental commitments, and social impact.

In the company's 2025 impact report, Narang noted that Toast had grown to serve more than 170,000 locations across five countries when counting the company's position in 2026.

Challenges Facing Aman Narang and Toast

Leading Toast at its current scale creates a different set of challenges from those faced by the founders during the company's basement years.

Toast now operates a large payments and software platform serving hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of people interacting with those businesses.

Key areas requiring continued attention include:

Maintaining growth at scale: Toast must continue adding locations while increasing adoption of products among existing customers.

Competition: Restaurant technology remains a competitive market, with POS, payments, delivery, marketing, payroll, and restaurant management providers competing for parts of the same customer relationship.

International expansion: Expanding into new countries introduces different payment systems, regulations, restaurant habits, and market structures.

AI execution: AI creates opportunities for automation and new products, but these products must provide measurable value to restaurant operators rather than simply adding another layer of technology.

Platform complexity: As Toast adds products, maintaining a unified and easy-to-use experience becomes increasingly important.

Narang's challenge is therefore not simply to make Toast bigger. It is to continue expanding the platform without losing the customer focus that helped create it.

Aman Narang's Leadership Legacy

Narang's career at Toast represents a relatively unusual founder journey.

He did not simply create a startup and hand it over to another executive. Instead, he spent years moving through different functions of the company before eventually returning to the CEO role.

He helped build sales and marketing, customer success, business development, operations, and fintech before becoming COO and eventually CEO.

That breadth gives Narang an unusually detailed understanding of Toast's business.

The company's evolution also reflects a broader shift in restaurant technology.

What began as an attempt to solve a simple problem around paying a restaurant bill became a full technology platform covering payments, operations, guest engagement, employee management, and increasingly AI.

Narang's role has been central to that transformation.

What Is Next for Aman Narang and Toast?

Toast's next stage is likely to be defined by three connected priorities: platform expansion, international growth, and artificial intelligence.

The company is already operating at significant scale, but management continues to see substantial room for growth.

Toast's Q1 2026 results showed continued growth in locations, payment volume, recurring revenue, and profitability. At the same time, Narang highlighted AI as an area where the company is investing to help restaurants increase demand and operate more effectively.

The strategic question for Narang is how far Toast can extend its role in the restaurant ecosystem.

If the company succeeds in connecting more aspects of restaurant operations through a single platform, Toast could become increasingly embedded in how restaurants manage their businesses.

Key Facts About Aman Narang

Category	Details
Full Name	Aman Narang
Current Role	CEO, Co-Founder & Director of Toast
Company	Toast, Inc.
Founded Toast	2011
Co-Founders	Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm
Previous Toast Role	Co-President and COO
CEO Since	January 1, 2024
Previous Company	Endeca
Education	B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science, MIT
Industry	Restaurant technology, SaaS, payments, fintech
Toast Locations	Approximately 171,000 as of Q1 2026
Toast 2025 Revenue	$6.153 billion
Toast 2025 GPV	Approximately $195.1 billion
Toast 2026 Q1 ARR	Approximately $2.2 billion
Public Company	Yes — NYSE: TOST

The current role and education information are supported by Toast and SEC filings, while the latest operating metrics come from Toast's 2026 financial reporting.

 Summary

Aman Narang is the CEO and co-founder of Toast, a technology and payments platform serving restaurants and food-service businesses.

After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science from MIT and working in product management at Endeca, Narang co-founded Toast with Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm.

The company began in Narang's basement and initially explored mobile payments before developing restaurant point-of-sale technology. Its customer-driven approach helped Toast expand into a much broader platform covering payments, operations, digital ordering, marketing, loyalty, workforce management, fintech, and AI.

Narang spent more than a decade in senior operating roles at Toast before becoming CEO in January 2024. Under his leadership, the company has continued expanding its location base, payment volume, international presence, enterprise business, and AI capabilities.

By 2026, Toast had grown to approximately 171,000 locations, while annualized recurring run-rate reached approximately $2.2 billion in the first quarter.

Narang's story is ultimately the story of a technical founder who stayed deeply involved in operations as his company evolved from a small startup into a major public technology platform.