PeopleofSuperintelligence

Builder

Ion Stoica

Ion Stoica is a UC Berkeley professor who co-founded Anyscale, a company that bets on Ray as the foundation for distributed AI workloads. He completed a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000 and has held a Berkeley post since 2000. He also co-founded Conviva in 2006 and Databricks in 2013. In 2023 he co-authored vLLM, and in 2025 he co-founded LMArena, an evaluation platform for large language models. As of October 2026, he is a professor in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley and executive chairman of Databricks and Anyscale.

Timeline

  1. 1989–2000

    A Carnegie Mellon doctorate

    He earns a master's degree in computer science and control engineering at Polytechnic University Bucharest in 1989. In 2000 he completes a PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

  2. 2000–2002

    A Berkeley professorship

    He holds a professorship at UC Berkeley from 2000. The National Science Foundation gives him a Presidential Early Career Award in 2002.

  3. 2006–2019

    Founding three companies

    He co-founds Conviva in 2006, Databricks in 2013 and Anyscale in 2019. At Anyscale he bets on Ray as the foundation for distributed AI workloads.

  4. 2012–2024

    ACM Fellow and NAE member

    He is named an ACM Fellow in 2012. In 2024 he is elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

  5. June 2021

    A $25 million gift to Berkeley

    He gives $25 million in June 2021 for the Gateway building and two new computer science faculty positions at UC Berkeley.

  6. 2023

    The vLLM serving engine

    He is one of the authors of vLLM, an LLM serving engine that the team introduces in June 2023.

  7. 2025

    A co-founder of LMArena

    He is a co-founder and advisor of LMArena, founded in 2025 to evaluate large language models.

  8. As of October 2026

    Executive chairman of Databricks

    He is a professor in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley and executive chairman of Databricks and Anyscale.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Ion Stoica yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Ion Stoica | EECS at UC Berkeley www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Ion Stoica - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Ion Stoica | NSF - U.S. National Science Foundation nsf.gov. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. Ion Stoica, co-founder and executive chairman of Databricks, on how to turn research into real companies - Foundation Capital foundationcapital.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Ion Stoica Named ACM Fellow | AMPLab – UC Berkeley amplab.cs.berkeley.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. Prof. Ion Stoica elected into the National Academy of Engineering – UC Berkeley Sky Computing Lab sky.cs.berkeley.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Trio of gifts, $75 million, accelerates transformation of computing and data science at Berkeley - Berkeley News news.berkeley.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. vLLM: Easy, Fast, and Cheap LLM Serving with PagedAttention | vLLM Blog vllm-project.github.io. Checked 14 October 2026.
  9. Report: LMArena Business Breakdown & Founding Story | Contrary Research research.contrary.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  10. Keynote: Ion Stoica, Professor, UC Berkeley, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Databricks and Anyscale, Co-Founder and Board Member, OPAQUE ccsummit2026.sched.com. Checked 14 October 2026.