Databricks, a start-up based in San Francisco, announced a landmark $10 billion Series J funding round, raising $8.6 billion so far and achieving a valuation of $62 billion. Led by new investor Thrive Capital, the round includes participation from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, GIC, Insight Partners, WCM Investment Management, and others. New investors include ICONIQ Growth, MGX, Sands Capital, and Wellington Management, while existing backer Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan also contributed.
This funding comes as Databricks experiences over 60% year-over-year growth, fueled by surging demand for AI-driven solutions. The company plans to channel the investment into AI product development, acquisitions, and expanding its international go-to-market operations. Additionally, the funds will support employee liquidity initiatives and tax obligations. Databricks expects to surpass $3 billion in annual revenue run rate and achieve positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025.
“We’re building transformative data and AI infrastructure to help companies across industries harness data intelligence,” said Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks. “This funding round, substantially oversubscribed, reflects a shared conviction in our vision to democratize access to AI and data.”
Databricks’ Recent Highlights:
• Surpassing 60% year-over-year growth in Q3 FY2024.
• Anticipating $3 billion annual revenue run rate and positive free cash flow by Q4 FY2025.
• Over 500 customers generating $1 million+ in annual revenue each.
• Databricks SQL achieving $600 million revenue run rate, growing 150% year-over-year.
• Establishing regional hubs in London, Singapore, and expanding in Latin America and the Middle East.
Databricks, founded in 2013 by Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Ion Stoica, Patrick Wendell, Reynold Xin, Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, and Andy Konwinski, is headquartered at 160 Spear Street, 15th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. The company’s core technology is the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, built on an open lakehouse architecture that unifies data, analytics, and AI workloads. This platform enables organizations to perform data engineering, data science, and machine learning tasks efficiently. Databricks has established partnerships with over 1,200 global partners, including major cloud service providers and technology firms. Notable customers span various industries and include companies like Walgreens, Rivian, Block, and Shell, utilizing Databricks’ solutions to enhance data-driven decision-making and AI capabilities.
In 2024, Databricks made several significant announcements. In March, the company introduced DBRX, an open-source large language model (LLM) developed by the MosaicML team at Databricks, featuring a mixture-of-experts transformer model with 132 billion parameters. In June, during the Data + AI Summit 2024, Databricks unveiled Mosaic AI, a platform for building and deploying production-quality Compound AI systems. The company also expanded its global presence by opening new regional hubs in London and Singapore, and extending operations in Latin America and the Middle East. Additionally, Databricks announced the acquisition of Tabular, a startup specializing in data management and open-source data formats, to enhance its AI client services. These developments underscore Databricks’ commitment to advancing data and AI technologies worldwide.
