Ali Ghodsi turned a research project into a $190 billion company
Databricks’ CEO is growing fast, and is in no hurry to go public.
Ali Ghodsi was born in Iran and grew up in Sweden, where his family settled after leaving the country. After a doctorate in computer science, he joined the AMPLab at the University of California, Berkeley, the research group where Apache Spark, an open-source engine for processing large amounts of data, was created.
In 2013, the researchers behind Spark founded Databricks to build a business around it. Ghodsi became CEO in 2016.
The lakehouse
Databricks popularized the “lakehouse,” an approach that combines cheap storage for raw data with the structure of a traditional data warehouse. As companies began training and running AI on their own data, that position put Databricks at the center of many AI projects.
Growth on its own terms
In August 2026, Databricks closed a $5 billion funding round at a $190 billion valuation, led by Coatue. Ghodsi told TechCrunch the company had passed $7 billion in annualized revenue, growing about 80% a year, and was cash-flow positive. The round had grown, he said, because of investor demand.
He has also said he is in no rush to list. In June 2026, he told Bloomberg Television that this was a bad year to go public.
What to watch
Databricks competes with Snowflake and with the cloud providers themselves. Its next tests are its database for AI agents and the timing of an eventual IPO.
- Company
- Databricks
- Role
- Co-founder & CEO
- HQ
- San Francisco, California
- Founded
- 2013
- Section
- AI
This profile draws on public reporting and company materials.
Sources: TechCrunch: Databricks raises $5B at $190B · The Next Web: Databricks closes $5B round · Fortune: Ghodsi on AI and valuation
Photo: DKP415, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
