# Ali Ghodsi

> Ali Ghodsi is the Iranian-born, Swedish-American computer scientist who went from programming games as a child and studying distributed systems in Sweden to co-founding Databricks out of UC Berkeley's AMPLab. A reluctant first-time chief executive, he took over in 2016 when the company had strong open-source credibility but little revenue, rebuilt its commercial leadership, and helped turn Apache Spark's research ecosystem into a global data and AI business valued at $190 billion in August 2026.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Databricks
- **Organizations:** Databricks, University of California, Berkeley, UC Berkeley AMPLab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Mid Sweden University, Swedish Institute of Computer Science
- **From:** Iran
- **Nationality:** Swedish-American
- **Education:** PhD in Computer Science, focused on distributed computing, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, MBA in Logistics and Marketing, Mid Sweden University, MSc in Computer Engineering, Mid Sweden University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Databricks in 2013 with six UC Berkeley researchers., Contributed to the research ecosystem that produced Apache Spark and coauthored work on Apache Mesos, Spark SQL, structured streaming, and distributed resource allocation., Took over as Databricks CEO in 2016 and led a commercial turnaround from minimal early revenue to a reported $7 billion revenue run rate in 2026.

## Career timeline

- **1980s** — Began programming computer games as a child in Sweden.
- **2006** — Completed a PhD in computer science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, with research in distributed computing.
- **2009** — Arrived at UC Berkeley for what was initially a year of research and joined work around distributed systems, machine learning, and data processing.
- **2013** — Co-founded Databricks with six fellow UC Berkeley researchers from the Apache Spark ecosystem.
- **2013-2015** — Worked part time as an engineer at Databricks while continuing his academic career.
- **2016** — Became Databricks CEO and rebuilt the company's commercial leadership and product strategy.
- **2021** — Led Databricks through a $1.6 billion Series H that valued the company at $38 billion.
- **2023** — Databricks acquired generative AI company MosaicML for approximately $1.3 billion.
- **2024** — Databricks announced up to $10 billion in financing at a $62 billion valuation.
- **2026** — Databricks closed a $5 billion round at a $190 billion valuation after crossing a $7 billion revenue run rate.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Databricks in 2013 with six UC Berkeley researchers.
- Contributed to the research ecosystem that produced Apache Spark and coauthored work on Apache Mesos, Spark SQL, structured streaming, and distributed resource allocation.
- Took over as Databricks CEO in 2016 and led a commercial turnaround from minimal early revenue to a reported $7 billion revenue run rate in 2026.
- Helped popularize the data lakehouse category, combining data-lake economics with data-warehouse management and performance.
- Serves as an adjunct associate professor in UC Berkeley's electrical engineering and computer sciences department.
- Built Databricks into a globally used private data and AI company valued at $190 billion in August 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Databricks acquired Row Zero, a governed spreadsheet company, to bring spreadsheet workflows into Genie for humans and AI agents.
- **2026-08** — Databricks closed a $5 billion funding round at a $190 billion valuation after reporting a revenue run rate above $7 billion and year-over-year growth above 80%.
- **2026-08** — Ghodsi said the new capital would support Lakebase, Genie, and Unity AI Gateway, products aimed at databases, enterprise context, and AI governance.
- **2026-06** — At Data + AI Summit, Ghodsi presented Databricks' LTAP approach, intended to reduce the traditional separation between transactional and analytical databases.
- **2026-02** — Databricks reported a $5.4 billion revenue run rate, 65% year-over-year growth, and more than $1.4 billion from AI products.

## Links

- Website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~alig/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alighodsi
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/alighodsi
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GYbqZRJeFM

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ali-ghodsi
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-26