The Professor Who Keeps Starting Billion Dollar Companies
He teaches at UC Berkeley. His students' projects became Databricks and Anyscale. Meet Ion Stoica.
Most professors teach, publish papers and mentor students.
Ion Stoica does that too. But he has also co-founded three important tech companies, including Databricks, one of the most valuable startups in the world.
From Romania to America
Ion Stoica grew up in Romania and studied at the Politehnica University of Bucharest.
He moved to the United States and earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2000, he became a professor at UC Berkeley.
A research star
Ion became known for work on distributed systems, which spread computing work across many machines. One of his early projects, Chord, became one of the most cited papers in computer science.
In 2006, he co-founded Conviva, a company that helps streaming services measure and improve video quality.
AMPLab and Databricks
At Berkeley, Ion co-directed AMPLab, where PhD student Matei Zaharia created Apache Spark.
In 2013, Ion co-founded Databricks with Matei, Ali Ghodsi and others. Ion was its first CEO, then became executive chairman when Ali took over in 2016.
Anyscale and Ray
In 2019, Ion co-founded Anyscale with former students Robert Nishihara and Philipp Moritz. Anyscale supports Ray, an open source tool that helps run AI and Python programs across many computers. Big AI companies use Ray to train and serve models.
Where he is now
Today, Ion Stoica is a professor at UC Berkeley, where he directs the Sky Computing Lab. He is executive chairman of Databricks and co-founder of Anyscale.
Why the story matters
Ion Stoica shows that teaching and building can go together. His lab turned student research into tools used by the biggest companies in the world.
For young builders, the lesson is simple. Find great mentors, and when you can, become one. Great teams grow from great labs.
He did not just teach systems. He built the ones AI runs on.
The Record
From: Romania
Studied: Politehnica University of Bucharest; PhD, Carnegie Mellon University
Built: Conviva, Databricks, Anyscale
Role: Professor at UC Berkeley; executive chairman of Databricks
Timeline
2000 Joins UC Berkeley as a professor.
2006 Co-founds Conviva.
2013 Co-founds Databricks and becomes its first CEO.
2016 Becomes Databricks executive chairman.
2019 Co-founds Anyscale.
Today Directs Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab.