Burak Aydın is a Turkish technology and business executive who has held senior leadership roles at major global and domestic enterprises, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), SabancıDx, Intel Turkey and Zorlu Holding. His career spans cloud computing, digital transformation, smart infrastructure and data driven services, areas that increasingly intersect with blockchain, Web3 and broader digital asset infrastructure.
Overview
Aydın serves as Technology and Digital Business Development Group President at Zorlu Holding, one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates. In this role, he leads the group’s technology, innovation and digitalization strategy, including the development of new digital business models that sit on top of cloud, data, artificial intelligence and connected device platforms. Prior to joining Zorlu Holding, he was the Country Director for AWS Turkey and previously the General Manager of SabancıDx, the digital and technology arm of Sabancı Group.
Throughout his career, Aydın has focused on helping enterprises modernize their technology stacks and business processes. His leadership in cloud and data driven services places him among the regional executives whose work influences the infrastructure layer that underpins many fintech, blockchain and Web3 applications.
History and Background
Burak Aydın studied Mechanical Engineering at Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), graduating in 1997, and went on to complete a Master of Business Administration at the same institution in 1999. Early in his career he worked as a consultant at Accenture in Germany and Austria, gaining experience in large scale enterprise technology projects across several industries.
He later returned to Turkey and joined Siemens Business Services, where he served in strategic planning consulting and managerial roles. In 2006, Aydın moved to Intel Turkey. Over more than a decade at Intel he held a series of business development positions, ultimately becoming Country Manager. This period gave him deep exposure to hardware, networking, and the evolution of connected devices, all foundational for modern cloud and edge computing architectures.
Leadership Roles at SabancıDx and AWS
After leaving Intel, Aydın joined Silver Spring Networks, a company focused on smart grid and smart city networks. In 2018 he became General Manager of SabancıDx, the technology and digital transformation subsidiary of Sabancı Group. SabancıDx provides analytics, cloud, cybersecurity and industry specific software solutions, positioning Aydın at the center of Turkey’s enterprise digitalization push across finance, energy, retail and industrial sectors.
In 2021, he took on the role of Country Director for AWS Turkey. At AWS, Aydın was responsible for expanding cloud adoption among startups, enterprises and public sector institutions. AWS is a key infrastructure provider for many blockchain and Web3 projects globally, including cryptocurrency exchanges, node operators and analytics platforms. Under Aydın’s leadership, AWS Turkey focused on building local capabilities around scalable compute, storage, data lakes and AI services, all of which can support distributed ledger and digital asset workloads.
Technology and Digital Business at Zorlu Holding
In December 2024, Aydın was appointed Technology and Digital Business Development Group President at Zorlu Holding. The role was created as part of Zorlu’s “Akıllı Hayat 2030” sustainability and transformation program, which aims to accelerate innovation, digitalization and artificial intelligence across the group’s businesses in energy, textile, consumer electronics and real estate.
At Zorlu, Aydın oversees strategies for information technology, data and emerging digital business lines. This includes designing and scaling new revenue models that leverage cloud based platforms, connected devices, advanced analytics and AI. While the group’s core business is not exclusively focused on blockchain, these technology domains are increasingly relevant to tokenized energy markets, digital identity, machine to machine payments and other real world use cases that link industrial operations with Web3 infrastructure.
Relevance to the Crypto and Web3 Ecosystem
Although Aydın is primarily known as a technology and cloud executive rather than a crypto native founder, his work has significant implications for the digital asset ecosystem. At AWS, fostering cloud adoption among startups and fintechs helped lower the barrier to entry for building and operating exchanges, non custodial wallet backends, analytics platforms and blockchain nodes. Cloud infrastructure is a critical dependency for many permissionless networks and centralized service providers in the crypto space.
Within Zorlu Holding and previously at SabancıDx, his focus on smart grids, industrial IoT and data platforms aligns with emerging blockchain use cases in energy, supply chain transparency and machine economy applications. By driving digital transformation in large, asset heavy enterprises, Aydın contributes to the environment in which tokenization, on chain data verification and decentralized coordination can be explored at scale.
Risks and Considerations
Aydın’s career highlights the central role that large cloud and technology providers play in the broader digital asset stack. While this can accelerate innovation and time to market for Web3 projects, it also raises ongoing debates about centralization, vendor concentration and regulatory exposure for infrastructure that hosts critical crypto services. Projects relying on hyperscale cloud platforms must balance operational benefits against the need for resilience and decentralization.
In addition, Aydın operates in a regulatory environment where data localization, cybersecurity rules and financial regulations continue to evolve. As Turkish institutions experiment with digital assets, tokenized products and advanced data services, alignment with local and international regulatory frameworks remains a key factor. Aydın’s roles at Zorlu Holding and previously at AWS and SabancıDx place him at the intersection of these technological and regulatory developments, making his work relevant to observers of how traditional enterprises may integrate or interact with blockchain and Web3 technologies over time.
