Early Life and Education
Matei Zaharia was born in Bucharest, Romania, on January 5, 1987. His family later moved to Canada, where he attended Jarvis Collegiate Institute in Toronto. He then pursued higher education at the University of Waterloo, earning a BMath with a double major in Computer Science and Combinatorics & Optimization in 2007. He graduated with honors. Zaharia continued his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2013.
Rise to Success
Zaharia's career is distinguished by his creation of Apache Spark, a widely-used open-source distributed computing framework. The project originated at UC Berkeley's AMPLab in 2009. He co-founded Databricks in 2013 with the goal of providing a unified data and AI platform. As Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Zaharia has played a key role in Databricks's evolution.
Key Business Strategies
Zaharia's primary contribution to Databricks is his technical expertise. His work on Apache Spark revolutionized how data is processed. Databricks's platform combines elements of data warehouses and data lakes for AI applications. Databricks has seen significant growth, including a $4 billion revenue run rate in Q2 2025 and a valuation of over $100 billion as of September 2025.
Philanthropy
While specific details on Zaharia's philanthropy are limited, his involvement in the development of open-source software like Apache Spark demonstrates his commitment to advancing technology and making it accessible. The success of Databricks itself is an impact on the tech community.
