Ali Ghodsi

Ali Ghodsi holds a deeply rigorous academic background forged at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the elite UC Berkeley AMPLab. His formative background researching peer-to-peer data transfers and distributed computing alongside computer science giants provided him with the precise theoretical and operational framework required to commercialize Apache Spark and successfully navigate Databricks through its early, highly volatile startup phase.

Ali Ghodsi is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Databricks, Inc. A effective distributed systems researcher and entrepreneur, Ghodsi co-created Apache Spark alongside Matei Zaharia at UC Berkeley, anticipating the large explosion of big data and distributed machine learning. Since assuming the CEO role in 2016, Ghodsi transformed Databricks from a specialized open-source startup into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise leader generating over $2.4 billion in annual revenue at a $43 billion valuation. Ghodsi championed the 'Lakehouse' paradigm, pioneered the company's first-party partnership with Microsoft Azure, orchestrated the landmark acquisitions of MosaicML ($1.3B) and Tabular ($1.0B+), and is widely recognized as one of the most effective executives in enterprise software history.