Databricks

What Databricks is

Databricks is a software company founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, California ^[1][2]. Its business rests on Apache Spark, an open-source distributed computing framework for splitting a large computation across many machines; the company also sells AI products, and in September 2025 it said those AI products were running at more than $1 billion a year ^[8].

Where it came from

The company grew out of the AMPLab project at the University of California, Berkeley, which created Apache Spark ^[1]. A framework like Spark breaks one large job into pieces and runs them in parallel on a cluster of machines, which is what makes it practical to work with data sets too big for a single computer.

Databricks was founded by seven people: Ali Ghodsi, Andy Konwinski, Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia, Patrick Wendell and Reynold Xin ^[1][2].

Azure Databricks

In 2017 Microsoft integrated Databricks into Azure as Azure Databricks ^[1]. That put the service inside Microsoft's cloud, so Azure customers could use it without assembling a separate stack of their own.

The funding history

The company's financing has been reported step by step, and the figures are worth following in order.

In 2021 Databricks raised $1.6 billion in a Series H round led by Counterpoint Global, at a valuation of $38 billion ^[4].

In mid-July 2023 it closed its acquisition of MosaicML, a generative AI platform, for roughly $1.3 billion ^[2][4]. On 14 September 2023 it announced a Series I round of more than $500 million at a $43 billion valuation, led by T. Rowe Price, with NVIDIA and Capital One Ventures joining as new investors ^[3][4].

On 17 December 2024 the company announced a $10 billion Series J at a $62 billion valuation; Thrive Capital led the round, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, GIC, Insight Partners and WCM Investment Management co-led it, and $8.6 billion had been completed at the time of the announcement ^[5]. After the round closed in January 2025, Databricks said it consisted of $10 billion of equity financing plus a $5.25 billion credit facility from several large banks ^[6].

On 19 August 2025 the company signed a term sheet for a Series K round valuing it at more than $100 billion, and on 8 September 2025 it announced that the round was closing at $1 billion, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, MGX, Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management ^[7][8].

On 16 December 2025 Databricks announced a Series L of more than $4 billion at a $134 billion valuation, led by Insight Partners, Fidelity Management and J.P. Morgan Asset Management ^[9][10]. On 16 July 2026 it announced a strategic funding round at a $188 billion valuation, signed as a term sheet led by existing investor Coatue and expected to close later that summer ^[11].

Size of the business

Next to the rounds, the company publishes figures on its own scale. In September 2025 it reported crossing a $4 billion revenue run-rate, with its AI products above a $1 billion run-rate, serving more than 20,000 organizations ^[8]. A run-rate is an annualised figure: it takes revenue from a recent period and states what a full year would produce at that pace, so it measures current speed rather than revenue already booked.

How the pieces fit together

Two threads run through the record. One is the move from an open-source research project to a commercial platform, including distribution through a partner's cloud ^[1]. The other is the pace of private fundraising: $38 billion in 2021, $43 billion in 2023, $62 billion in 2024, more than $100 billion on the 2025 term sheet, $134 billion in December 2025 and $188 billion in the 2026 strategic round ^{[4][5][7][9][10][11]}.

The mix of investors also widened. Later rounds brought in venture firms such as Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, asset managers such as T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and WCM Investment Management, and a chip company, NVIDIA, which joined in the 2023 round ^{[3][4][5][9][11]}. The structures grew more elaborate too, with the Series J combining equity with a bank credit facility ^[6].