ACM Prize in Computing Honors Matei Zaharia for Foundational Contributions to Data and Machine Learning Systems

Open-Source Systems, Including Apache Spark, Delta Lake, and MLflow Redefined Data Processing and Enabled Modern AI at ScaleNEW YORK, April 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Matei Zaharia as the recipient of the ACM Prize in Computing for his visionary development of distributed data systems and computing infrastructure, which has enabled large-scale machine learning, analytics, and AI at global scale. Continue Reading ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Matei Zaharia as the recipient of the ACM Prize in Computing for his visionary development of distributed data systems and computing infrastructure, which has enabled large-scale machine learning, analytics, and AI at global scale. (PRNewsfoto/Association For Computing Machinery, Inc.) The ACM Prize in Computing recognizes early-to-mid-career computer scientists whose work has had broad and lasting impact. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by an endowment from Infosys Ltd, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. Zaharia's work addressed a central challenge in computing: how to work with and analyze rapidly growing volumes of data efficiently, and at a scale previously accessible only to the largest technology companies. Early distributed data systems were limited in speed and poorly suited to emerging workloads such as machine learning and interactive analysis. Through a sequence of open-sourc...