Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks

In this episode of Talks at GS, Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, discusses how his personal journey has influenced his entrepreneurial and leadership style, his company’s mission to build the future of data and AI for all enterprises, and key insights to how Databricks drives innovation within the tech landscape.

On the state of AI: “It’s very early…I know this is cliché, but Marc Andreessen said, ‘software is eating the world.’ He meant software is in your Apple Watch, it’s in your thermostat, it’s in your Tesla car, everywhere it’s software. I really think AI will follow software. Wherever you have software, you’re going to collect data and you’re going to automate things. It’s going to be more intelligence. So, you get more intelligent software…we’re still in the ‘software is eating the world’ kind of phase. So… it’s very early.

On entrepreneurial and leadership style: “Try to simulate…how they feel, or what they want, or what they want to buy, or how they feel about your products, or how they feel about how you’re treating them as employees…If you can empathize and really simulate how people are thinking, you can much better connect to them.  And I think that’s really, really crucial.”

The episode was recorded on June 17, 2021.