Eliot Horowitz

Eliot Horowitz is an American software engineer and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and former chief technology officer (CTO) of MongoDB, Inc., a prominent NoSQL database company, and as the founder and CEO of Viam, Inc., a platform for robotics and automation software.^[1] Born and raised in New York, Horowitz began coding at the age of four and by nine was developing software for his mother's medical practice, sparking an early passion for technology. He earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Brown University, where he interned at DoubleClick and met future collaborator Dwight Merriman. After graduation, Horowitz joined DoubleClick full-time as a software engineer before co-founding ShopWiki, an e-commerce search engine, with Merriman in 2006—a venture that earned them recognition as two of BusinessWeek's Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.^[2] In 2007, Horowitz, Merriman, and Kevin Ryan co-founded MongoDB (initially as 10gen), with Horowitz writing much of the core codebase for its scalable, open-source document-oriented database, which addressed limitations in traditional relational databases for handling big data. As CTO from 2007 to 2020, he led engineering and product teams, growing the company to over 600 commercial customers^[3] and a workforce of more than 320 by late 2013,^[4] while launching initiatives like an online education system that attracted over 100,000 registrants.^[5] MongoDB's success transformed data management for developers worldwide, emphasizing flexibility and community-driven open-source development.^[1] In late 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Horowitz founded Viam to bridge the gap between software and hardware engineering in robotics, creating tools that enable developers to build and iterate on automation solutions for industries like marine, climate, and manufacturing. Under his leadership as CEO, Viam has supported projects such as protecting North Atlantic marine life through the WAVS initiative and restoring New York Harbor's ecosystem via the Billion Oyster Project, reflecting Horowitz's commitment to applying technology to real-world societal challenges.^[6]^[1]

Early life and education

Early life

Eliot Horowitz was born in 1981 in Connecticut and spent much of his childhood dividing time between there and New York. Both of his parents worked as doctors, providing a family environment where technology intersected with medical applications from an early age.^[7] Horowitz's introduction to computing came through his father, who was enthusiastic about technology and purchased a Radio Shack computer in the early 1980s. His father wrote simple games on the machine, which Horowitz enjoyed playing and soon began modifying himself, marking the start of his hands-on engagement with programming. By age four, he had begun coding, demonstrating an precocious aptitude for software development.^[7]^[8] Before turning ten, Horowitz was applying his skills practically by writing programs to assist in his mother's medical practice, an experience that highlighted the potential of technology to support professional workflows in healthcare. This early immersion in coding, shaped by his family's professional context, fostered a deep and enduring passion for building software solutions.^[8]

Education

Horowitz attended Brown University, graduating in 2003 with a Sc.B. in computer science.^[8]^[9] His coursework emphasized foundational topics in software development, algorithms, and systems programming, providing essential preparation for his subsequent professional endeavors in scalable data technologies.^[8] Building on early childhood experiences with coding that began at age four, Horowitz's formal education at Brown honed his technical skills through rigorous academic projects and internships in software engineering.^[8]

Professional career

Early career

After graduating from Brown University with a Sc.B. in computer science in 2003, Horowitz joined DoubleClick as a software developer in its research and development group.^[10] During his internship at the company while in college and subsequent full-time role from 2003 to 2005, he worked alongside key figures such as co-founder Dwight Merriman and CEO Kevin Ryan, building technical expertise in software engineering.^[7] At DoubleClick, a leading digital advertising firm, Horowitz contributed to the development of infrastructure for online advertising technologies, focusing on high-scale web applications capable of handling massive data volumes.^[11] His work exposed him to significant challenges in scaling relational databases to support the company's rapid growth, including serving over 400,000 ads per second amid the booming internet advertising sector.^[12] These experiences highlighted the limitations of traditional database systems for dynamic, high-throughput environments.^[13] In 2005, Horowitz co-founded ShopWiki, an e-commerce search engine, with Dwight Merriman. As CTO, he developed the core crawling and data extraction technology. The venture earned them recognition as two of BusinessWeek's Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.^[14] Horowitz's tenure at DoubleClick coincided with the company's expansion as a pioneer in ad tech, culminating in its acquisition by Google in 2008 for $3.1 billion, though he had departed by then to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.^[13] The practical insights gained into scalable systems and database bottlenecks profoundly shaped his approach to subsequent technology ventures, emphasizing flexible and performant data management solutions.^[12]

MongoDB

Eliot Horowitz co-founded MongoDB in 2007 alongside Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan, all former colleagues at DoubleClick, with the initial goal of creating a scalable database solution to meet the demands of modern web applications that outgrew traditional relational models. Drawing from their experiences handling high-volume data at DoubleClick, the founders sought to build a flexible, developer-friendly system that prioritized scalability and ease of use for dynamic web environments. Horowitz played a pivotal role in this inception, authoring the core codebase for MongoDB starting that year and shaping it as a NoSQL document-oriented database that stores data in flexible, JSON-like BSON format to support rapid iteration and horizontal scaling. As chief technology officer from 2007 to 2020, Horowitz led MongoDB's product engineering efforts for 13 years, overseeing the development of features that enabled the database to handle large-scale web applications with high performance and availability. Under his technical leadership, MongoDB adopted an open-source model from the outset, fostering widespread community adoption and contributions that accelerated its evolution into a versatile platform. Key innovations during this period included advancements in sharding and replication for distributed systems, which allowed the database to manage petabyte-scale data across global deployments while maintaining developer productivity. MongoDB's growth under Horowitz's tenure marked several significant milestones, including its public launch in 2009 and rapid expansion to serve thousands of customers worldwide. The company's open-source approach drove broad adoption among developers and enterprises, positioning MongoDB as a leading alternative to legacy databases. In October 2017, MongoDB went public on the NASDAQ, pricing its IPO at $24 per share and achieving an initial valuation of approximately $1.2 billion, with shares rising to value the company at over $1.5 billion on the first trading day. The platform further evolved into a cloud-based database management system with the 2016 launch of MongoDB Atlas, a fully managed service that simplified deployment and scaling in multi-cloud environments, now comprising a substantial portion of the company's revenue. Horowitz departed MongoDB in early 2020, shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with his resignation announced in March and his last day as CTO on July 10, after guiding the company from startup to a major technology firm valued in the tens of billions.

Viam

In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Eliot Horowitz founded Viam, Inc., inspired by a personal project in which he built a robot with his family, highlighting the challenges of integrating hardware and software in robotics.^[1]^[15] As the founder and CEO, Horowitz leads the development of Viam as an open-source engineering platform designed to democratize robotics by providing accessible tools for developers, startups, and enterprises.^[16]^[1] Viam's mission centers on bridging hardware—such as cameras, sensors, and robotic arms—with software to enable AI integration, automation, and data management for real-world applications, from industrial automation to environmental monitoring.^[17] The platform is frequently described as the "WordPress for robotics," offering modular components that simplify the creation and deployment of intelligent machines without requiring deep hardware expertise.^[6] Key developments include a $30 million Series C funding round in March 2025, led by Union Square Ventures with participation from Battery Ventures and Neurone Ventures, bringing total funding to $117 million and supporting expansion in AI-driven robotics infrastructure.^[18]^[19] Viam has established partnerships for fleet management, including collaborations with KUKA to integrate drivers for robotic arms in 2024 and with Canyon Runner to monitor vessel fleets in real time.^[20]^[21] In 2025, Viam announced further partnerships, such as with Viking Yachts for robotic sanding solutions in the marine industry in June and with GOST for the Specter Ai security platform in May, and introduced its robotic surface finishing system to European boat builders at Metstrade 2025 in November.^[22]^[23]^[24] The platform's technical focus is on scalable, modular software architectures for production-grade robots, leveraging Horowitz's prior experience in building high-performance systems at MongoDB to ensure reliability and ease of scaling across diverse hardware ecosystems.^[1]^[25]