# Andy Konwinski

> Andy Konwinski is an American computer scientist, founder, and investor who helped turn UC Berkeley research into Apache Mesos, Apache Spark, and Databricks; became an early investor, founding president, and co-founder of Perplexity; and now backs research-led companies through Laude Ventures while funding open academic work through Laude Institute.

- **Role:** Co-founder of Laude Institute; Co-founder and General Partner at Laude Ventures
- **Organizations:** Laude Institute, Laude Ventures, Databricks, Perplexity, University of California, Berkeley, Apache Software Foundation
- **From:** Wisconsin, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BS in Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, MS in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, PhD in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-created Apache Mesos, which received the USENIX NSDI Test of Time Award in 2021., Contributed to the team that created Apache Spark and became a founding Spark committer and Project Management Committee member., Co-founded Databricks in 2013 and created Spark Summit, now Data + AI Summit.

## Career timeline

- **2007-2012** — Completed graduate work at UC Berkeley's AMPLab; contributed to Hadoop, co-created Apache Mesos, worked on Google's Omega scheduler, and joined the team that created Apache Spark.
- **2011** — Co-authored the Dominant Resource Fairness paper on allocating multiple resource types in shared clusters.
- **2012** — Completed a PhD thesis titled Multi-agent Cluster Scheduling for Scalability and Flexibility under adviser Randy H. Katz.
- **2013** — Co-founded Databricks with six fellow Berkeley researchers and created the inaugural Spark Summit, later renamed Data + AI Summit.
- **2015** — Co-authored the first edition of Learning Spark with Holden Karau, Patrick Wendell, and Matei Zaharia.
- **2019** — Stepped back from day-to-day work at Databricks after roles spanning early marketing, education and services, and VP of Product for AI/ML.
- **2022** — Co-founded Perplexity after investing early through the researcher network around Computer Science Graduate Ventures; served as founding president.
- **2024** — Co-founded Laude Ventures, a $150 million seed fund focused on technical, research-led founders.
- **2024** — Announced the $1 million Konwinski Prize for the first AI system to score 90% on a contamination-resistant version of SWE-bench.
- **2025** — Pledged $100 million as an anchor gift to launch Laude Institute and delivered UC Berkeley CDSS's undergraduate commencement address.
- **2026** — Laude selected eight Moonshots seed winners from 125 proposals and funded 25 teams with more than $4 million in total seed support.

## Achievements

- Co-created Apache Mesos, which received the USENIX NSDI Test of Time Award in 2021.
- Contributed to the team that created Apache Spark and became a founding Spark committer and Project Management Committee member.
- Co-founded Databricks in 2013 and created Spark Summit, now Data + AI Summit.
- Co-authored Learning Spark, published by O'Reilly Media.
- Co-founded Perplexity and served as its founding president after becoming one of its first investors.
- Co-founded Laude Ventures and raised a $150 million first fund for research-led technical founders.
- Committed $100 million to launch Laude Institute in 2025.
- Created the $1 million Konwinski Prize for progress on real-world AI software engineering.
- Co-authored Shaping AI's Impact on Billions of Lives with a group including David Patterson, Jeff Dean, John Hennessy, and Finale Doshi-Velez.
- Delivered the 2025 UC Berkeley CDSS undergraduate commencement address.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Appeared on the Sources with Alex Heath podcast to discuss Laude, open research, and competition between academia and large AI labs.
- **2026-04** — Laude announced eight Moonshots seed winners; each received $250,000 and six months to compete for a $10 million multi-year lab, while 17 additional teams also received funding.
- **2026-04** — Published The Scientists Are Just Getting Started, describing the 125 proposals and 600 researchers behind Laude's first Moonshots cohort.
- **2026** — Laude Institute expanded its Slingshots program and continued releasing open research infrastructure, including Harbor and agent-evaluation work.

## Links

- Website: https://andykonwinski.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andykon
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/andykonwinski
- GitHub: https://github.com/andyk

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