One of the most important magazines in the world has spoken with the Romanian billionaire who does not want to give up the chair: “It's not just about money. It's about building something that matters”
Ion Stoica computer teacher became a billionaire launching four startups started from her research laboratory at California University, Berkeley-two of them being evaluated at over one billion photo photo capture
Informatics professor Ion Stoica, born in Romania and reached one of the most prestigious universities in the US, became a billionaire launching four startups started in his research laboratory at California, Berkeley, two of them being evaluated at over a billion dollars. However, at the age of 60, he says he does not intend to give up teaching.
“If you are only led by money, you list the company on the stock exchange through an IPO (initial public offer-no). This is the easiest way. But this is not. It is about building something that matters,” Ion Stoica told Forbes, in an article dedicated to the Romanian teacher.
In almost three decades of academic career in the US, Stoica co-founded four companies, including Databricks and Anyscale, both started as open-source projects at the University. Databricks, data analysis company evaluated at $ 62 billion, transformed into a billionaire, and Anyscale, specialized in tools for developing large -scale applications, has an assessment of $ 1.4 billion.
AI duel that attracted millions of votes
In 2023, Stoica's team launched Chatbot Arena, a platform where users can compare artificial intelligence models, including Vicuna's own chatbot, with other models like Alpaca, developed in Stanford. The platform has become popular, being used today by companies such as Openai, Xai and Google for testing AI, and has collected over 3.5 million votes.
Rebrand in April as Lmarena, the company has caught $ 100 million from investors and is valued at $ 600 million. Stoica is the chairman of the Board of Directors, according to the quoted source.
From post-communist Romania to US top universities
Originally from Romania, Stoica left for the US in the late 1990s to do his doctorate at Carlon Mellon University. Since 2000 he teaches at UC Berkeley, where he runs a laboratory funded by most technology companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and IBM, with an annual budget of over $ 6 million.
“In the depths of the soul, I am a university framework,” says Professor Ion Stoica, quoted by Forbes. “The reason why I did not go into full -time business are students. Young people, in their training years, sometimes I do not know what is possible or not. They have this type of faith and that is why you can get unexpected solutions.”
Stoica's vision of the long -term impact of ai
Over 80 students were directly mentored by Stoica, many of them getting to work in the academic environment or startups, including seven on DataBricks.
Even if the labor market in the field of technology is more difficult, it encourages young people to use the new tools: “It is clear that there will be short-term difficulties. But it looks from another perspective. AI means accelerating human evolution and, finally, becoming an interplanetary civilization.
More than two years ago, journalist Alexandra Nistoroiu (at that time at Freedom, currently in Snoop) visited Ion Stoica in San Francisco, within a journalistic series called “competent Romanians”. In that dialogue, Stoica spoke at large about the experience of departure in Romania, about the impact or war in Ukraine.
