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Ali Ghodsi

Cofounder and CEO, Databricks

Search every verified Ali Ghodsi interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Ali Ghodsi, cofounder and CEO of Databricks, has recently discussed AI risk and enterprise adoption in several public appearances. In a September 2026 conversation with a16z, he argued that current models are capable of automating more work than most companies currently use them for, and identified the lack of institutional context in models as a key barrier to wider adoption. He also stated that he believes the existential risk of AI to humanity is "close to zero," while emphasizing that cybersecurity is a real and growing threat, noting that the time from a vulnerability's disclosure to its weaponization has shrunk from years to hours. Ghodsi has also said that the AI transformation will take decades to fully impact society, drawing a comparison to the time it took for electricity to replace steam power. In interviews, Ghodsi has discussed his approach to running Databricks, including his focus on identifying the company's single biggest bottleneck and dedicating a disproportionate amount of attention to it for several years. He has also commented on the company's decision to remain private, stating that preparing for an IPO would not be a good use of time given the current demand for its software. He has spoken about the importance of open source to Databricks' history, attributing the company's existence to the Apache Spark ecosystem, and has noted that over 90% of databases created on its Neon and Lakebase products are now created by agents.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think first and foremost that there maybe we agree on this that leaders have responsibility to not freak people out unnecessarily unless there's really really good reason. And I think you know there's always different people in society that are at different places you know in their mind space. So, you know, talking about these kind of existential risks and, you know, scenarios where all of humanity is going to be w”

“We believe that AGI is already here. Okay. So artificial general intelligence has already arrived. Um in fact I came to the United States to do research at UC Berkeley at the lab called the AMP lab where the A was for algorithms and AI. It was the largest AI lab at this time 2009 and actually this conference came out of software that we built at that lab and the definition of AGI that we had back then we've already s”

“I think that, you know, it's just there's three mega IPOs that have been rumored. One of them happened. You know, so letting those kind of go through the system and see how that sort of plays out and things stabilize a little bit. And I think that, you know, getting a little bit further into sort of AI revolution that we're going through, I prefer for the company to go public when, you know, water is a little bit mor”

“We're investing heavily into these new product categories. We just launching a completely new product for our that's called Customer Lake, which is an area of marketing. So we're, you know, targeting marketing folks, which is not an area where we used to be active. You know, two months ago we launched a security product called Lake Watch. And we're getting into a security space. You know, it takes resources to get in”

“I just think that, uh, there's, uh, if you have, like, big dislocations happening and there's big things happening, you know, election year, there's, you know, there's macroeconomic indicators that, you know, could be great, could not be great. We don't know right now, uh, you know, there is, uh, uncertainty, you know, with, uh, energy and other things going on in the world. Um, and then there's this mega IPOs. And n”

“Chinese models. Open source models are absolutely dominating. You know, and when people have the choice to use them. Yeah. It's like, hey, would you want to pay $30 million or $1 million? Well, you have to have used a Chinese model. Okay, fine.”

Other executives at Databricks

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