Andy Konwinski

Andy Konwinski (born October 15, 1983) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is known for co-founding Databricks;, a global data and AI platform, and for his early contributions to Apache Spark. He also co-founded Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, the early-stage venture capital firm Laude Ventures, and Laude Institute, a nonprofit institute for computer science researchers. His work bridges research and real-world deployment in software infrastructure and artificial intelligence.

After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Konwinski received his PhD from UC Berkeley, advised by Randy H. Katz. During his time there, he contributed to Apache Hadoop and co-created Apache Mesos and Apache Spark. He founded Databricks in 2013, with fellow AMPLab researchers Ali Ghodsi, Reynold Xin, Matei Zaharia, Ion Stoica, Patrick Wendell, and Arsalan Tavakoli.

Konwinski has co-authored several influential papers, including "Shaping AI's Impact on Billions of Lives" (2024) with David Patterson, Jeff Dean, John L. Hennessy, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, and Finale Doshi-Velez; Dominant Resource Fairness (2011) with Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Benjamin Hindman, Scott Shenker, and Ion Stoica; and "A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing" (2009) with David Patterson, Ion Stoica, and Matei Zaharia.

Konwinski co-founded Databricks and served as VP of Product Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, creator of the Data+AI Summit and co-author of the O’Reilly Learning Spark Book.

In 2022, he co-founded the AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI with Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho.

In 2024, he co-founded Laude Ventures, an early stage venture firm focused on investing in technical founders, mostly with research backgrounds, with Pete Sonsini and Andrew Krioukov. In 2025, he pledged $100M to establish Laude Institute, an organization for computer science researchers, with Dave Patterson, Jeff Dean, and Joelle Pineau.

He co-teaches UC Berkeley’s Research to Startup seminar.

In 2025, Konwinski delivered the commencement address at the University of California, Berkeley for the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. The address took place over two ceremonies at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California.