Databricks Co-Founder Wins Prestigious ACM Award, Declares ‘AGI Is Already Here’

Matei Zaharia, CTO and co-founder of Databricks, almost missed the email notifying him of his award from the ACM Prize in Computing in 2026. He expressed surprise at the news to TechCrunch. Zaharia’s work, developed for his PhD at UC Berkeley under professor Ion Stoica, evolved into the launch of Databricks in 2009. He introduced Spark, an open-source project designed to accelerate big data processing, a turning point similar to today’s AI impact, which catapulted the young Zaharia into tech fame. As Databricks’ engineering leader, Zaharia transformed it into a cloud storage powerhouse, a foundation for AI, raising over $20 billion and achieving a $134 billion valuation with $5.4 billion in revenue. On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery recognized his contributions with an award and a $250,000 cash prize, which he will donate to charity. In addition to his CTO role, Zaharia is an associate professor at UC Berkeley, focusing on future AI advancements. He claims AGI is present in unrecognizable forms and cautions against imposing human standards on AI. AI’s ability to assimilate extensive knowledge quickly contrasts with human limitations. Misjudging AI as human-like can have negative consequences. Zaharia cites OpenClaw, a popular AI agent, as an example: it efficiently handles tasks yet poses security risks by imitating a trusted human assistant. As a professor and engineer, Zaharia is enthusiastic about AI automating research in various fields, predicting AI-driven research without errors will become widespread. He envisions AI enhancing search and research, leveraging strengths beyond text and images, into fields like molecular simulation. He is passionate about AI’s potential in search, particularly for research and engineering.