Databricks to Host AI Thought Leaders at Spark + AI Summit 2018

SAN FRANCISCO, April 04, 2018 -- Databricks, provider of the leading Unified Analytics Platform and founded by the original creators of Apache Spark™, today announced Marc Andreessen as a keynote speaker for this year’s Spark + AI Summit conference taking place in San Francisco from June 4-6, 2018. Andreessen will participate in a Fireside Chat with Databricks Co-founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi. Spark + AI Summit, which is hosted by Databricks, is the leading event for data scientists, data engineers and business professionals to engage in discussions regarding data, analytics and practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI).

The keynote agenda also includes the original creators of Apache Spark. Matei Zaharia, who is the Co-founder and Chief Technologist at Databricks and Assistant Professor at Stanford University, will talk about why large-scale data is essential to AI and how Apache Spark enables data and AI projects. Ali Ghodsi, together with Michael Armbrust, will present on the unification of big data and AI.

“Most enterprises are struggling to achieve the full potential of AI because it’s really all about the data. The algorithms haven’t changed in decades, but getting massive amounts of clean, labeled, real-time datasets to Machine Learning models is non-trivial,” said Ghodsi. “Having a unified analytics platform that unifies AI with big data is critical to making AI achievable, and Apache Spark is the only unified analytics engine underpinning AI today.”

Additional keynote speakers include:

• Andrej Karpathy, Director of Artificial Intelligence at Tesla 
• Dawn Song, Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley
• Michael I. Jordan, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at University of California, Berkeley

More than 4,000 attendees at the Spark + AI Summit, previously known as Spark Summit, will attend three days of training sessions, presentations and networking events. This year’s event will take place at the Moscone West Convention Center and will include over 180 talks. Key themes for this year’s Spark + AI Summit include real-world AI use cases, the latest in deep learning frameworks and Apache Spark integration, best practices for productionizing machine learning models, and how to use Apache Spark at scale.

Find out more information on the full agenda and register to attend this year’s Spark + AI Summit 2018.

About Databricks
Databricks’ mission is to accelerate innovation for its customers by unifying Data Science, Engineering and Business. Databricks' founders started the Spark research project at UC Berkeley that later became Apache Spark. Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform powered by Apache Spark for data science teams to collaborate with data engineering and lines of business to build data products. Users achieve faster time-to-value with Databricks by creating analytic workflows that go from ETL and interactive exploration to production. The company also makes it easier for its users to focus on their data by providing a fully managed, scalable, and secure cloud infrastructure that reduces operational complexity and total cost of ownership. Databricks, venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz, NEA and Battery Ventures, among others, has a global customer base that includes Viacom, Shell and HP. For more information, visit www.databricks.com.

Apache, Apache Spark and Spark are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation.

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