Databricks is the pioneer of the data lakehouse, a unified platform for data science, machine learning, data engineering, and analytics. Founded by the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow, Databricks is on a mission to accelerate AI innovation and help data teams solve the world's toughest problems with its industry-leading Databricks Lakehouse Platform.
Seven academics who had never run a company argued the warehouse and the lake were one product. We wrote the first institutional check on that argument in 2013 — and joined eleven of the fourteen disclosed rounds since.
The thesis was never Spark; it was the flywheel. Give the standard away — Spark, Delta Lake, MLflow — and become the obvious place to run it. That pattern held through the lakehouse and is holding again through AI, with models training inside the same boundary as the data.
Matei Zaharia builds Spark as a PhD project at UC Berkeley’s AMPLab: an in-memory answer to MapReduce that runs orders of magnitude faster on iterative work. It stays an academic project for four years, and it is the foundation everything since is built on.
Ali GhodsiCo-founder & CEOOne of the seven Berkeley researchers behind Apache Spark. Took the CEO seat in 2016 and has run the company from early revenue to a $190B valuation.LinkedIn ↗
Matei ZahariaCo-founder & CTOWrote Spark as his PhD project at the AMPLab and created MLflow. Still teaches at Berkeley and sets the technical agenda.LinkedIn ↗
Reynold XinCo-founder & Chief ArchitectTop Spark contributor by commits. Owns the architecture of the lakehouse runtime and the Delta Lake format.LinkedIn ↗
Arsalan Tavakoli-ShirajiCo-founder & SVP, Field EngineeringBuilt the go-to-market motion from zero. Runs the field organization that most new engineering and GTM hires work alongside.LinkedIn ↗
Most work happens at home; some fully remote roles skip Team Days.
He asks candidates to solve real problems from the job.
An in-house saying: "all of our popular features come from Hackathons".
Ned
Compute Fabric Team, San Francisco
The team moved from Berkeley in 2015, undeterred by the unlucky number.
Employees write a plan for the market drying up.
Said when the ACM announced his prize for creating Apache Spark.
Candidates are also asked to leave current and former employers’ confidential information behind.
Seven Berkeley academics agreed to start Databricks over cheap Indian food in 2012.
Ali Ghodsi
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
A Stanford podcast on trust and making hard decisions.
Ali Ghodsi
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
First Brickster Champion: Louis Frolio, a technical trainer and former pastry chef, in November 2025.
Six principles emphasize customers, high standards, truth, first principles, action, and putting the company first.
Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi discuss executive failures, micromanagement, and who can write a playbook.
Ben Horowitz
Co-founder and General Partner, a16z; Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO, Databricks
