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☆ Exclusive: $38 billion data and AI darling Databricks acquires security startup Okera
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Data and AI company Databricks is acquiring data security startup Okera. Recently, customers have increasingly asked about data security when creating custom AI models. In 2015 and 2016, software engineer Nong Li spent a number of months at data and AI startup Databricks. Databricks plans to integrate Okera deeply in the company, specifically as part of its data and AI governance offering, Unity Catalog, Ghodsi said. Today, Unity Catalog is Databricks' number one priority as it looks to build the end-to-end platform for data, analytics, and AI, Ghodsi said.

Databricks sells software tools for building AI systems. Ghodsi told Reuters that the company is releasing the free training data in the hope that other companies will use it to make their own AI systems, possibly using Databricks to do so. But it could not be used in commercial products because the data used to train the model was generated by OpenAI's ChatGPT, whose terms of service forbid using its data to develop commercial AI systems that could compete with OpenAI. Using data generated by AI to train other AI systems has become common. Users will be able to examine the training data themselves, which they cannot do for models such as ChatGPT or Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Bard, whose training data wasn't released.

The code is an AI model, an algorithm that is trained on sets of data and can then learn from new data to perform a variety of tasks. Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said the release was aimed at demonstrating a viable alternative to training a kind of AI model called a large language model with enormous resources and computing power. OpenAI, valued at $29 billion, trains its AI models with huge troves of data on a supercomputer from investor Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O). Databricks wants enterprises to train their own AI models using its software. "My belief is that in the end, you will make these models smaller, smaller and smaller, and they will be open-sourced," Ghodsi said.

☆ ChatGPT is a breakthrough, software firm says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailChatGPT is a breakthrough, software firm saysAli Ghodsi of Databricks discusses the power of artificial intelligence and says the "amazing thing" about the chatbot ChatGPT is that it's available to everyone.

☆ The tech IPO market collapsed in 2022, and next year doesn't look much better
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ari Levy | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

The Stockholm-based company raised financing at a $6.7 billion valuation this year, an 85% discount to its prior valuation of $46 billion. Butler doesn't expect the IPO market to get appreciably better in 2023. Butler also thinks that Silicon Valley has to adapt to a shift away from the growth-first mindset before the IPO market picks up again. Butler said he expects this "cultural reset" to take a couple more quarters and said, "that makes me remain pessimistic on the IPO market." Databricks raised $1.6 billion at a $38 billion valuation in August of 2021, near the market's peak.

☆ Databricks: 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Companies across the economy are storing massive amounts of data and across more categories. Databricks removes the hassle of configuring and updating third-party software to perform data analytics, and doesn't require clients to copy data into its software in order to work with it. Instead, data can stay where it already is, such as in Amazon Web Services' widely used S3 object-storage system, and Databricks can still crunch the numbers. The 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise list is powered and inspired by the members of CNBC's Technology Executive Council (TEC). Learn more about CNBC Councils.

☆ Automation and AI May Be Safe From Tech Budget Cuts, Says Databricks CEO
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Kim S. Nash | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

Automation is one part of the corporate tech budget unlikely to see cuts as companies tighten spending amid an economic downturn, said Databricks Inc. Chief Executive Ali Ghodsi. The company offers open-source tools for storing and analyzing large troves of data, with a focus on building artificial intelligence applications. Open-source data tools can help avoid lock-in, a scenario in which a tech provider often raises fees or slows innovation over time, he said. Farming and construction equipment maker Deere & Co., for example, is looking to Databricks’ open-source tools to build a repository for data analytics. Mr. Ghodsi declined to put a date on an IPO other than to say it will be “in the not too distant future.”Write to Kim S. Nash at kim.nash@wsj.com

☆ The quiet success of Tecton, a $900 million startup, has turned rivals Snowflake and Databricks into co-investors — and fanned a fierce debate over the future of AI
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tecton, which specializes in a technology called feature stores, was a more divisive subject among industry insiders. Both Databricks and Snowflake have invested heavily in real-time data pipelines, including in Tecton's latest funding round. But it was hardly alone among machine-learning startups in commanding a high valuation with nominal revenue. Many investors wondered whether Tecton's feature stores were "a feature, not a product," as Steve Jobs famously called Dropbox. That skepticism remains, and some insiders expect a roll-up of overvalued machine-learning startups that attack one piece of the workflow, including Tecton.

☆ How Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi went from doing research in a college lab to cofounding the $38 billion big data startup — and what he's learned about leadership along the way
▼ + stars: | 2021-12-10 | by ( Rosalie Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The most important groundwork for building company culture was a strong founding team, Ghodsi says. Ghodsi arrived at UC Berkeley in 2009 for a year-long program to research machine learning and data processing. Working at European universities, Ghodsi says he was often shut down when proposing out-of-the-box research ideas, but "UC Berkeley was different. Ghodsi went on to cofound Databricks out of a UC Berkeley research lab in 2013. Databricks' founding team was extremely innovative, Ghodsi says, with backgrounds in research and creating open source data project Spark.

☆ We asked CEOs from 24 companies like HP and Prudential about their actions plans for addressing equality and racism. Here are the 5 main takeaways.
▼ + stars: | 2020-06-13 | by ( Jennifer Eum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

After releasing heartfelt statements recognizing systemic racism in the US and pledging to fix it, corporate America's response is taking shape. Social media platform TikTok, for example, is using an internal diversity task force to solicit insight from outside organizations and experts. Many organizations making donations to organizations like historically black colleges or investing in causes to advance social justice. Blue Apron, the meal-kit service, will give a day off to employees for election day, November 3. The quick responses from these CEOs indicate that deeper conversations on diversity, equality, and inclusion have taken shape at the top-most levels of large companies.

Persons: George Floyd's, EY, Kelly Grier, Edward Jones, It's, Enrique Lores, Ali Ghodsi, Albert Bourla, Publicis, Burson, Cohn, Wolfe, Juneteenth Organizations: Business, Consulting, Employees, Duke Energy, Cannabis, Inc, Microsoft, Pfizer, Black, Citrix, Capital, Publicis Groupe, US, Nike, Twitter Locations: America

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