# Sammy Sidhu

> Sammy Sidhu is the co-founder and CEO of Eventual, the company behind Daft, an open-source, Python-native data engine built to wrangle messy multimodal data like images, video, audio and LiDAR at petabyte scale. A UC Berkeley EECS grad with a background in high-performance computing and deep learning, he cut his teeth on Wall Street high-frequency trading and then on the perception stacks of self-driving cars at DeepScale (acquired by Tesla), Lyft Level 5 and Woven Planet (Toyota). After repeatedly watching brilliant engineers burn 80% of their time fighting data plumbing instead of building, he and Jay Chia turned that frustration into Eventual. Daft now processes petabytes daily at Amazon, CloudKitchens, Together AI and Essential AI, and the company has raised roughly $30M from investors including CRV, Felicis, Microsoft's M12 and Citi.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Eventual
- **Organizations:** Eventual, Daft, Woven Planet (Toyota), Lyft Level 5, DeepScale, UC Berkeley
- **From:** San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), focus on Machine Learning and Distributed Systems; graduate research in the ASPIRE Lab and BAIR Lab, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded Eventual and created Daft, an open-source Python-native multimodal data engine, Daft processes petabytes of data daily across companies including Amazon, CloudKitchens, Together AI and Essential AI, Raised roughly $30M for Eventual from CRV, Felicis, Microsoft's M12 and Citi

## Career timeline

- **Berkeley** — Graduate researcher under Kurt Keutzer in the ASPIRE/BAIR labs, working at the intersection of deep learning, HPC and medical AI; TA for CS186/286, CS61A, CS61B and EE40
- **Early career** — Worked on high-frequency trading on Wall Street
- **DeepScale** — Chief Architect and founding-team member; scaled the company from 4 to 30 people, built computer vision models and deep learning compilers, authored 12+ patents. DeepScale was acquired by Tesla (Autopilot)
- **Lyft Level 5** — Perception Lead for self-driving; designed an ML platform for 100+ engineers and optimized pipelines saving $10M+ annually
- **Woven Planet (Toyota)** — Senior Staff Engineer; led research on sensor fusion for vision-based autonomous vehicles, published at NeurIPS
- **2022** — Co-founded Eventual with Jay Chia; joined Y Combinator (W22) and released the first open-source version of Daft
- **2025** — Eventual announced ~$30M in total funding (Seed led by CRV, Series A led by Felicis with M12 and Citi); Daft processing petabytes daily at Amazon, CloudKitchens, Together AI and Essential AI

## Achievements

- Co-founded Eventual and created Daft, an open-source Python-native multimodal data engine
- Daft processes petabytes of data daily across companies including Amazon, CloudKitchens, Together AI and Essential AI
- Raised roughly $30M for Eventual from CRV, Felicis, Microsoft's M12 and Citi
- Founding member and Chief Architect at DeepScale, acquired by Tesla
- Authored 12+ patents and published research, including work at NeurIPS
- Graduated UC Berkeley in EECS and conducted graduate research in the ASPIRE and BAIR labs

## Latest updates

- **2025-06** — Eventual publicly announced roughly $30M in total funding and detailed Daft's adoption at Amazon, CloudKitchens, Together AI and Essential AI; covered by TechCrunch and SiliconANGLE.
- **2025-06** — Sidhu spoke at Databricks' Data + AI Summit 2025 on multimodal and AI data processing with Daft.

## Links

- Website: https://sammysidhu.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammy-sidhu
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/sammy_sidhu
- GitHub: https://github.com/samster25
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggC6LBTDcMA

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sammy-sidhu
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-21