# Andy Konwinski

Co-founder, Laude, Databricks, and Perplexity. TIME100 AI 2026, Shapers. Started at a trade school and a community college, then co-founded both Databricks and Perplexity. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Konwinski))

- Born: 1983-10-15, Rural Wisconsin, U.S. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Konwinski))
- Education: PhD, Computer science, UC Berkeley, 2012; BS, Computer science, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2007; Associate's, Computer science, University of Wisconsin–Fox Valley, 2005 ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Konwinski), [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andykon))
- Career: Laude Ventures (Co-founder and General Partner, 2024 to now); Laude Institute (Co-founder, 2024 to now); Perplexity (Co-founder and founding President, 2022 to now); Computer Science Graduate Ventures (2019 to now); Databricks (Co-founder; VP Product AI/ML, 2013 to now) ([laude.vc](https://laude.vc/team/andy-konwinski), [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andykon), [laude.org](https://www.laude.org/), [forbes.com](https://www.forbes.com/profile/andy-konwinski/), [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Konwinski), [andykonwinski.com](https://andykonwinski.com/about/))
- TIME profile: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/andy-konwinski/
- Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/most-influential-people-in-ai/andy-konwinski

- Went to a trade school and a community college before transferring to UW-Madison and then a Berkeley PhD. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Konwinski))
- As a Berkeley grad student he co-created Mesos and was on the team that built Apache Spark, the basis of Databricks. ([andykonwinski.com](https://andykonwinski.com/about/))
- One of very few people to co-found two AI-era giants: Databricks in 2013 and Perplexity in 2022, where he was founding President. ([forbes.com](https://www.forbes.com/profile/andy-konwinski/))
- Put $100 million of his own money into the Laude Institute, a nonprofit funding moonshot computer science research. ([forbes.com](https://www.forbes.com/profile/andy-konwinski/))
- Runs the K Prize, a $1M contest for the first AI to score 90% on a contamination-free version of SWE-Bench. ([andykonwinski.com](https://andykonwinski.com/about/))