Databricks Co-Founder Wins ACM Award and Claims AGI Is Already Here

Matei Zaharia, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Databricks, has been named the 2026 recipient of the ACM Prize in Computing. The award from the Association for Computing Machinery recognizes Zaharia’s collective contributions to the field of computing, specifically highlighting his development of Spark.

Zaharia originally developed the technology for Spark during his PhD at UC Berkeley under professor Ion Stoica. Launched in 2009, Spark was designed to significantly increase the speed of big data projects, which were often slow and cumbersome at the time. The open-source project transformed the tech industry’s approach to big data processing and served as the foundation for the eventual launch of Databricks.

The ACM Prize in Computing includes a $250,000 cash prize. Zaharia has stated that he intends to donate the funds to a charity that has not yet been determined.

Perspectives on Artificial General Intelligence

Alongside the award announcement, Zaharia shared his views on the current state of artificial intelligence. He asserted that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is already present, though it may not be in a form that people currently recognize.

AGI is here already. It’s just not in a form that we appreciate

Matei Zaharia

Zaharia suggested that the industry should move away from applying human standards to AI models when evaluating their capabilities. This perspective aligns with previous assertions made by Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi on November 18, 2025, at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia + Technology Conference.

During that conference, Ghodsi claimed that AGI is already a reality and that current AI chatbots meet the criteria for AGI—defined as AI capable of human-like reasoning—based on standards set ten years ago. Ghodsi argued that the industry frequently shifts the goalposts, moving the focus from AGI to the pursuit of superintelligence, which would surpass human reasoning.

Ghodsi expressed a preference for prioritizing systems that can effectively automate routine tasks and develop intelligent agents over the pursuit of superintelligence.

Databricks Growth and Market Position

Under Zaharia’s engineering leadership, Databricks has evolved from its Spark roots into a cloud storage provider and a data foundation for AI and agents. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.

The company’s financial growth is reflected in its valuation and revenue figures:

• The company has raised over $20 billion in funding.
• Its valuation has reached $134 billion.
• Databricks has achieved $5.4 billion in revenue.

In addition to his role as CTO, Zaharia serves as an associate professor at UC Berkeley.

Challenges in AI Scaling

While the company continues to expand, its leadership has noted challenges regarding the progression of AI models. On November 18, 2025, Ali Ghodsi noted that the scaling laws that previously drove rapid progress in AI appear to have plateaued.

Ghodsi stated that newer iterations of models, specifically Anthropic’s Claude 4 and OpenAI’s GPT-5, have failed to provide significant enhancements. He remarked that extracting value from the next large pre-trained model is becoming increasingly difficult.