# Daniel Smilkov
Building since 2018. Not reviewed by Daniel.
Page: https://mrrmaker.com/@danielsmilkov
Co-founded Lilac (2023); acquired by Databricks (2024)
In their words: "bio": "Co-founder of Lilac AI, acquired by @databricks. Co-created TensorFlow.js. Ex: Google Brain, PAIR, MIT Media Lab" (github.com)

## Numbers
- Products: 2
- Building since: 2018

## Products
- Lilac (2023 – 2024): sold, sold to Databricks

## Timeline
- Mar 2024: Sold Lilac to Databricks [verified]
- Jan 2024: Lilac: Launched Lilac Garden, a hosted cloud service, starting with LLM-powered text clustering [stated]
- Aug 2023: Launched Lilac [stated]
- Mar 2018: On TensorFlow Developer Summit 2018, TensorFlow.js talk and live demo [stated]

## How sure
6 verified by someone other than Daniel, 15 stated by Daniel in public, 0 outdated. Read on 11 Oct 2026.

## Sources
- Daniel Smilkov, Homepage, smilkov.com: https://smilkov.com
- github.com: https://api.github.com/users/dsmilkov
- About | Lilac, lilacml.com: https://www.lilacml.com/team-3-1
- Introducing Lilac - Lilac, lilacml.com: https://docs.lilacml.com/blog/introducing-lilac.html
- 100x Faster Clustering with Lilac Garden - Lilac, lilacml.com: https://docs.lilacml.com/blog/introducing-garden.html
- 100x Faster Clustering with Lilac Garden | Hacker News, news.ycombinator.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195073
- Lilac Joins Databricks to Simplify Unstructured Data Evaluation for Generative AI | Databricks Blog, databricks.com: https://www.databricks.com/blog/lilac-joins-databricks-simplify-unstructured-data-evaluation-generative-ai
- Databricks acquisition of Lilac targets GenAI development | TechTarget, techtarget.com: https://www.techtarget.com/data-technologies/news/366574859/Databricks-acquisition-of-Lilac-targets-GenAI-development
- Databricks acquires Lilac AI to boost data quality for LLM training | InfoWorld, infoworld.com: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3714681/databricks-acquires-lilac-ai-to-boost-data-quality-for-llm-training.html
- Daniel Smilkov (Anthropic (formerly Lilac AI / Databricks)) — ThursdAI guest, thursdai.news: https://thursdai.news/guests/dsmilkov
- Introducing TensorFlow.js: Machine Learning in Javascript — The TensorFlow Blog, blog.tensorflow.org: https://blog.tensorflow.org/2018/03/introducing-tensorflowjs-machine-learning-javascript.html
- TensorFlow.js | Machine Learning for JavaScript Developers, tensorflow.org: https://www.tensorflow.org/js
- [1901.05350] TensorFlow.js: Machine Learning for the Web and Beyond, arxiv.org: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.05350
- Site checks on 2026-10-11, MRRMaker: https://mrrmaker.com/how-it-works#checks

Labels: "verified" means confirmed by someone other than the founder; "stated" means the founder said it in public. Method: https://mrrmaker.com/how-it-works