Why This Billionaire Berkeley Professor Won’t Leave The Classroom

This computer science professor became a billionaire launching four startups out of his privately-funded research lab, including unicorns Databricks and Anyscale. But it’s never been just about business.

Berkeley Professor Ion Stoica and his students don’t like being one-upped by anyone, let alone by archnemesis Stanford. That’s why, when a user asked for a way to compare their open-source chatbot Vicuna with the rival school’s Alpaca model, the Berkeley team pitted the bots against each other in a bloody AI battle.

The user community went wild. Soon, Stoica’s group added the ability to test random models side by side and let people vote on the battle outcome. It was all in good fun, explains associate professor Joseph Gonzalez, who worked on the project along with Stoica and his students Wei-Lin Chiang and Anastasios N. Angelopoulos.

As chair of a task force set up to address Berkeley’s research funding cuts, Stoica is encouraging fellow professors to go after private funding, mimicking the model that has brought his own lab so much success.

The reason he never went into business full-time is his students: “Young people in their formative years, sometimes they don’t know what is possible or not…They have this kind of belief, and that’s why you are going to get unexpected solutions,” he explains. Plus, Stoica credits his business success to his research focus: “It’s the act of creation…exploring new ideas.”

ByMartina Di Licosa

Many thanks to Cal Alum Alexis V. for sharing   Go Cal!

***

• Founder’s gifts: In 2021, two of Databricks’ faculty co-founders, Ion Stoica and Scott Shenker, donated $25 million each to UC Berkeley’s new Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). Their wealth was generated from their ownership stakes in Databricks, not through a direct university investment.
• The House Fund: An independent venture capital firm, The House Fund, invests exclusively in startups with roots at UC Berkeley, including Databricks. While it provides investment opportunities for the Berkeley community, its profits are separate from the university’s budget.
• No “university stake” model: Although Databricks began as a university research project, UC Berkeley did not take an equity stake in the company when it was formed. This is unlike some other university start-up arrangements, where the institution receives a percentage of profits.
• Individual wealth: The financial success of Databricks led to personal enrichment for its founders and early employees who came from the university. Some of these individuals have since given back to the university, but this is a donation rather than a realized profit from a direct stake