When Bob van Luijt, the CEO of SeMI Technologies, looks at the history of databases, he highlights a few distinct waves. First, there was the world of SQL, where all the data fit neatly into rectangular tables. Then came the NoSQL revolution that brought the flexibility of the document model, where each entry didn't need to have the same fields. Now, his company is bringing Weaviate to the market as part of a wave of AI-centric databases that merge the power of machine learning with data storage. The new model offers not just the potential for tapping the power of AI algorithms, but also a more flexible search engine that isn't locked into searching for exact matches.

Bob van Luijt's career in technology started at age 15, building websites to help people sell toothbrushes online. Not many 15 year-olds do that. Apparently, this gave van Luijt enough of a head start to arrive at the confluence of technology trends today. Van Luijt went on to study arts but ended up working full time in technology anyway. In 2015, when Google introduced its RankBrain algorithm, the quality of search results jumped up.