Portrait of Ali Ghodsi

Rank #751

Ali Ghodsi

Net worth $5.5B

Data analytics · Sweden

Born
Dec 08, 1978
Age
47
Source
Data analytics
Residence
San Francisco, California
Citizenship
Sweden
Marital status
Married
Children
0
Education
Ph.D, KTH Royal Institute of Technology; Master of Business Administration, Mid Sweden University; Master of Science in Engineering, Mid Sweden University

Net worth over time

Biography

  • Ali Ghodsi is cofounder and CEO of software startup Databricks, which private investors valued at $134 billion in February.
  • After a career in academia, Ghodsi cofounded Databricks with six UC Berkeley academics who built the popular analytics engine Apache Spark.
  • Databricks is built on top of Spark and uses AI to power, in Ghodsi's words, a "data lakehouse" that helps companies store and utilize their data.
  • Ghodsi was tapped to lead Databricks in 2016 amid company struggles to generate revenue; initially, he had joined in 2013 as a part-time engineer.
  • The first-time CEO orchestrated a turnaround after revamping Databricks' leadership and product offerings.
  • Ghodsi is a Swedish citizen, who arrived in the country as a child after his family was forced to flee Iran during the 1979 Revolution.