Andy Konwinski, cofounder of Databricks and Perplexity, is a computer scientist and investor focused on AI, data infrastructure, and research-driven startups. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science at UC Berkeley, where he contributed to Apache Hadoop and co-created Apache Mesos and Apache Spark. He later cofounded Laude Ventures and Laude Institute, including a $100 million commitment to support AI researchers.

Denis Yarats, cofounder and CTO of Perplexity, previously worked at Microsoft, Quora, and Facebook AI Research. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from NYU and has research experience in machine learning and reinforcement learning. At Perplexity, he helped build the company’s AI answer engine, which combines large language models with real-time, source-backed search.

Aravind Srinivas, cofounder and CEO of Perplexity, has become one of the most visible challengers to Google in the AI search race. Born in Chennai and trained at IIT Madras and UC Berkeley, he worked at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind before launching Perplexity in 2022 with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. The company built its reputation around citation-backed answers rather than traditional search links, reaching a reported $20 billion valuation in 2025 and making Srinivas one of the standout founders of the generative AI boom.

Chris Stolte, Tableau cofounder and technical advisor, helped turn academic research in data visualization into one of the most influential analytics companies of the modern software era. Launched in 2003 with Christian Chabot and Pat Hanrahan, Tableau reshaped business intelligence by making data analysis more visual, intuitive, and accessible, before Salesforce acquired the company in a $15.7 billion deal in 2019. Stolte remains closely associated with the technical vision that made Tableau a defining force in analytics.

Luis von Ahn, cofounder and CEO of Duolingo, is a pioneering computer scientist who turned language learning into one of the world’s most successful education apps while helping define the economics of crowdsourced internet infrastructure. Before Duolingo, he created reCAPTCHA, later acquired by Google, and built a reputation for converting human attention into scalable digital systems. At Duolingo, he helped grow the company from a mission-driven startup into a publicly traded global platform spanning language, math, and music education, with AI increasingly central to its product strategy.

Thierry Cruanes is a co-founder of Snowflake and a visionary database architect who redefined cloud data storage. Before launching Snowflake in 2012, he spent thirteen years at Oracle as a lead architect, specializing in parallel query execution and optimization. His technical expertise was instrumental in designing the platform’s unique architecture that separates compute from storage, fueling its rise to the largest software IPO in history. A PhD in Computer Science with over 40 patents, Cruanes remains a key figure in the company’s technological evolution. He is widely credited with helping shift the global industry toward high-performance, cloud-native data analytics.