Andy Konwinski (@andykonwinski) / X

Andy Konwinski

368 posts

Andy Konwinski

@andykonwinski

Co-founder of @databricks, @perplexity_ai, @laudeinstitute, @laudeventures

Berkeley California

Joined July 2010

Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Today, I’m launching a deeply personal project. I’m betting $100M that we can help computer scientists create more upside impact for humanity. Built for and by researchers, including @JeffDean & @jpineau1 on the board, @LaudeInstitute catalyzes research with real-world impact.
340K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
May 20, 2024
As a PhD starting Databricks, I did not value sales. Now I see a founder's job is selling: to investors, employees, candidates, customers; and sometimes, myself.
182K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Dec 12, 2024
I'll give $1M to the first open source AI that gets 90% on this sweet new contamination-free version of SWE-bench - kprize.ai
102K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
May 29, 2025
If you had 15min to tell thousands of Berkeley CS/Data/Stats grads what to do with their lives, what would you say? Last Thursday I told them to RUN AT FAILURE. Afterwards, while we were shaking hands & taking selfies, hundreds of them told me that they are excited to go fail. I
00:00
53K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
May 23, 2024
Crazy startup valuations remind me of my @databricks cofounder Ion's advice: stay frugal, stay hungry. We bought rebuilt chairs from some dude's garage in Berkeley and went to Ikea for our first desks.
26K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
@LaudeInstitute is a non-profit that gives the right resources to the right researchers at the right time. We help more researchers go from idea to impact.
Laude Institute // Ship Your Research
From laude.org
11K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
When @matei_zaharia and I published about Hadoop with Ion Stoica in our first year at Berkeley, we shipped the code too. That line of research led Matei to build @ApacheSpark. Spark became @databricks. The lesson stuck with me. Breakthroughs only matter when you ship them.
10K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
If you are working on something the world should see: → Apply on the laude website for support → Come to an event → Tell your peers → Follow us @LaudeInstitute And ship your research.
Laude Institute // Ship Your Research
From laude.org
9.4K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
We’re at a hinge moment. Engineered intelligence is no longer theoretical. The systems we build today will shape our future. Whether AI moves society forward or fractures it depends on who is building and why. Seriously, I just gave a whole commencement speech about it.
8.6K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
Two flagship programs: → Slingshots fund early-stage research like Terminal-Bench, cited by @AnthropicAI during the Claude 4 launch tbench.ai → Moonshots back long-horizon labs solving species-level challenges shapingai.com
Terminal-Bench
From tbench.ai
7.2K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
May 29, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
I don’t want them to fail. But as I said in my speech, “if you optimize for success, you’re not going to pick a hard enough problem. And our problems are existential." I told them to pick problems they probably won’t solve in their lifetimes. To think about our institutions
4.3K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
Jun 23, 2025
Replying to @andykonwinski
Some of the scientists I admire most are steering @LaudeInstitute — including @JeffDean, @jpineau1, and Dave Patterson on our board, and advisors @alighodsi, @istoica05, @lschmidt3, @matei_zaharia, @denisyarats, @AlexGDimakis, @rxin, & more. Grateful to be building this w/ them.
5.8K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
May 17, 2024
In the first few months Perplexity had a new product demo every 2-3 weeks. Product-market-fit in 4 months. The velocity permanently defined the culture.
9.6K
Andy Konwinski
@andykonwinski
May 31, 2024
Introducing Headless Terminal (ht) - making terminals easy for LLMs to use. While using LLM agents for coding I needed something like a headless browser but for terminals. So I teamed up with @sickill (creator of asciinema) to build github.com/andyk/ht - an open source
2.7K