Why This Billionaire Berkeley Professor Won't Leave the Classroom
a day ago
- #research
- #AI
- #startups
- Berkeley Professor Ion Stoica co-founded four startups, including Databricks and Anyscale, turning his research into billion-dollar companies.
- Stoica's lab created ChatBot Arena (rebranded as LMArena), a platform for testing AI models, which raised $100M at a $600M valuation.
- Born in Romania, Stoica moved to the U.S. for his PhD and later became a professor at UC Berkeley, where he continues to teach and research.
- Conviva, Stoica's first startup, provides streaming analytics and was valued at $300M in 2017.
- Databricks, co-founded by Stoica, developed Spark, a powerful data-processing tool, and is rumored to be eyeing an IPO.
- Anyscale, another Stoica co-founded startup, focuses on scaling AI applications and raised $260M, reaching a $1.4B valuation.
- Stoica emphasizes the importance of university research and open-source projects, which have been key to his startups' success.
- As chair of a task force at Berkeley, Stoica encourages private funding to counteract research budget cuts.
- Stoica mentors over 80 students, many of whom work in academia or startups, including at Databricks.
- Stoica advises students to embrace AI tools, seeing them as essential for future technological and interplanetary advancements.