Ion Stoica

About Ion Stoica

Ion Stoica is cofounder and executive chairman of software startup Databricks, which private investors valued at $100 billion in September 2025.

He served as the original CEO from its inception in 2013 until early 2016, when he ceded the position to cofounder Ali Ghodsi.

Prior to Databricks, Stoica cofounded video streaming startup Conviva. He is also a UC Berkeley computer science professor.

Stoica cofounded Databricks alongside six UC Berkeley academics who had built the popular data analytics engine Apache Spark.

Databricks is built on top of the Apache Spark framework and uses AI to help companies store and utilize their data.