Databricks co-founder wins prestigious ACM award, says 'AGI is here already'

7 hours ago

Matei Zaharia, co-founder and CTO of Databricks, received the 2026 ACM Prize in Computing with a $250,000 cash prize, which he plans to donate to charity.
He created Spark during his PhD at UC Berkeley, an open-source project that revolutionized big data processing and became foundational for Databricks, now valued at $134 billion with $5.4 billion in revenue run rate.
Zaharia argues against applying human standards to AI, noting that AI's ability to pass knowledge tests like the bar exam doesn't equate to general intelligence, and warns of risks such as security nightmares with AI agents like OpenClaw.
He is optimistic about AI's future, particularly in automating research and engineering tasks, envisioning AI-powered tools for accurate, hallucination-free information understanding and simulation, similar to how vibe coding democratized programming.

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