Tasso Argyros

entrepreneur & vp eng @ Databricks ··· founder of category defining cos: Aster Data (big data) and ActionIQ (customer data platform) ··· Stanford CS PhD dropout

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

Big personal update 💥

After founding & exiting two companies (a database pioneer & a CDP powerhouse), I’m starting a new chapter: I've joined @databricks!

I’m here to build and lead their brand-new engineering office, right here in NYC 🗽

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

Lots of prep work for Data + AI summit, which is quickly coming up in a couple weeks. If you haven't registered yet, now is the time to do it!

https://t.co/6vcXRecZmA

[Reynold Xin @rxin]

Oracle has spent the last two weeks writing articles comparing Oracle (and PDB) to Lakebase, and it highlights a massive philosophical divide in how we view databases in the agentic era.

They are trying to retrofit heavy, traditional architectures for AI. We believe Lakebase are the future because agents need something entirely different:

⚡️ Super simple APIs: so agents don't have to read a giant manual and hallucinate a query.
⚡️ Sub-second provisioning & auto-scaling: so you aren't paying legacy-level prices for idle time.
⚡️ Branching: Git-style branching to create isolated, safe environments for agents on the fly.
⚡️ Automatic backup & restore: so you don't sweat it when an autonomous agent inevitably drops a table.

The numbers speak for themselves. Lakebase is our fastest growing product. In the last few months alone, we've seen database start rate 30X, and now we are starting tens of millions of databases EVERY DAY. Some of these databases have 500 level deep branches and lifetime of just seconds due to how fast agents move.

Go try it yourself in a few seconds on https://t.co/ne9Tv18JhV!

The team has been cooking hard to push this gap even further. Come to Data and AI Summit next month to hear about some major new breakthrough capabilities. 🚀

(Links next so you can read their take)

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@JaredSleeper Love the un-hyped, nuanced take, Jared

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@deedydas Is this data from the ramp credit card? if so would this data be strongly biased towards low ACV products that get paid by card vs high ACV that’s done via ACH/wires?

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

i hear so many such stories of folks moving to nyc to LOCK IN on BUILDING

more focus, more long term thinking, less noisy hype… and fewer get-rich-quick SV mercenaries

and by the way, if you are one of these devs- we’re hiring in dbx nyc 🗽🚀

[Tiffany Zhao @tiffzhao05]

I left Google DeepMind, moved from SF to NYC, all within 2 weeks to join @quadrillion_ai — to build the future of automated research intelligence with the highest slope founder and most talent dense team.

I grew up in Silicon Valley — the old Facebook office was my second home. I’d hang out there after school, drawing with my crayons while looking around at the sea of computers with lines of code. Since a young age, I felt empowered to have an array of interests beyond tech: piano, ballet, figure skating, art. The valley embraced diversity of thought, and that’s what inspired me to stay for Stanford and my career thus far.

But today, SF is one big hive-mind.

So, I moved to NYC, away from family and friends to build a company that doesn’t need to rely on a bubble to survive.

I’m meeting customers day after day in all kinds of verticals, connecting with them in different ways and seeing our product bring real value. Here, I’m able to live in diversity of thought.

I’m excited to build the future of research in the city of opportunity. Let’s chat if this excites you.

[Ali Ghodsi @alighodsi]

Just got this internal email on Genie Code progress! For the first time, we have MORE code written by Genie Code than by humans on the platform.

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@Yuchenj_UW @alighodsi @pwendell @matei_zaharia welcome! looking forward to working together.

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@martin_casado depends on whether the frontier labs market becomes a monopoly vs oligopoly and how competitive it is.

if the labs continue being competitive they’ll be forced to open them up. if one of them wins or a few split the market (eg one does coding, the other does tasks) then… maybe

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

Huge congrats to @matei_zaharia for this incredible and well deserved distinction! Every CS PhD student dreams of achieving this one day, very few actually do.

[Databricks @databricks]

We're incredibly proud to congratulate our co-founder and CTO, @matei_zaharia, on receiving the ACM Prize in Computing for his development of distributed data systems that have enabled large-scale machine learning, analytics, and AI.

Matei's open-source contributions have fundamentally changed how organizations work with data and AI — including Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, and MLflow. Researchers, nonprofits, startups, and enterprises across every industry have built on the foundation he helped create.

Now he's pushing the frontier further, focusing on building and scaling reliable AI agents through open-source research like DSPy and GEPA.

Matei, this recognition is so well deserved. We're honored to build alongside you every day. https://t.co/mgBvBc3QnP

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@RyanMWexler bingo!

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

Same thing is about to happen with databases

[aaron holmes @aaronpholmes]

New: AI agents are flooding GitHub, leading to a surge in traffic (14x last year's, by one metric). That's been a boon for the business, but has also led to a rise in outages recently, GitHub's COO tells @theinformation.

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@andrewoetting yeah 100% and smart founders use this to their advantage! there’s also a broader market-efficiency argument for this behavior, not saying it’s all bad.

but there’s a lot that humans get away with that agents could never do, no matter how smart these models get

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

clearly Geoff doesn’t know how things *really* work in vc

the main way associates get their intel is by violating confidentiality

good luck getting Sequoia’s AI agent to disclose their dealflow to a16z’s agent…

(unless perhaps if those agents are built on OpenClaw…)

[GEOFF WOO @geoffreywoo]

the venture capital bloodbath is coming and most vcs have zero idea

agents will replace 90% of what associates and principals actually do:
• deal sourcing through network analysis
• due diligence via automated data mining
• portfolio monitoring with real-time metrics
• pattern matching across 10,000x more deals

what exactly are you getting paid for when an agent can analyze every startup in your sector in 3 minutes?

the entire industry is built on information asymmetry that ai just eliminated

most funds will become algorithmic within 24 months

the only vcs who survive are the ones who can actually build companies, not just write checks and send intros

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@andrewoetting sure, that’s true as well. But try fundraising for more than two weeks and watch every VC in the world finding out about it, including the confidential details of your business. you tell me how that happens

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@brackin yes- verifying the data and collecting reputational signals for the founders and product is easier said than done

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@reidRMC if you have priorities in life why not marry your dealflow

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@tizimmer indeed!

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@AxelMtbr technically yes, but this would never get past the MDs and GCs. stuff like this only work in the shadows

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

Few people are wired like @dougleone.

He was my board member over 15 years and became the most important business mentor I ever had.

His insights at board meetings were as sharp as a knife. He was gentle during hard times and harsh during boom times.

Truly one of the best!!

[Pat Grady @gradypb]

It's a great day to be a founder: we've named @dougleone chairman of @sequoia.

Doug passed the baton a few years back, but he never left: he’s been in the office, working on boards, and serving as consigliere to the next generation.

When we realized how much gas Doug has left in the tank, we invited him to ramp back up as an investor at Sequoia. Please cut him some slack as he onboards over the next couple weeks. Let’s go!

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

@apivault_labs two ETL pipelines, two vendors, two places to go for insights, finger-pointing whenever something goes wrong... complexity rises exponentially

[Tasso Argyros @tasso]

This is a HUGE deal from Databricks.

Security data (think logs etc) are massive, and one of the main data sources that *already* exist in the Lakehouse. However even though Lakehouses have powerful processing abilities, until now you had to extract that data and load them in proprietary “data islands” with limited functionality.

This means your data was difficult to access, security insights hard/slow to get, and costs went through the roof.

Open Lakehouse + Lakewatch is the way to go. Excited to offer this new approach to the market!

[Ali Ghodsi @alighodsi]

We believe security needs to be open and agent-centric. 𝐋𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 is built directly on the open data lakehouse pattern. By bringing agentic automation directly to where your open data already lives, we're automating the heavy lifting in the Security Operations Center. As a result, you keep ownership of your data, your agents can operate on absolutely everything, and you get it done in a architecturally cost efficient way.

https://t.co/Hsgo37fkIH