Databricks raises over $4 billion Series L at a $134 billion valuation

Background

Databricks is a privately held software company whose business includes a data warehousing product and a set of AI products; it also offers a database called Lakebase^[1]. Venture-backed companies typically raise money in rounds labelled alphabetically, starting at Series A and moving through B, C and onward. A Series L therefore says something on its own: this is a company that has been through many rounds of private financing and is raising capital at a late stage. That naming convention is useful context for reading the announcement of December 2025.

What was announced

On 16 December 2025, Databricks announced that it was raising a Series L investment of more than $4 billion, at a valuation of $134 billion^[1]. The round was led by Insight Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company and J.P. Morgan Asset Management^[1]. In a financing like this, the lead investors generally take a large share of the round and help set its terms.

A long list of additional participants joined: Andreessen Horowitz, funds managed by BlackRock and Blackstone, Coatue, GIC, MGX, NEA, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Robinhood Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Temasek, Thrive Capital and Winslow Capital^[1].

One word in the announcement is worth noting. Databricks said it was raising the money, rather than that a transaction had closed. The figure and the valuation are therefore the company's own description of the round in its announcement.

The numbers behind the round

Alongside the financing, Databricks disclosed revenue figures. It said it had crossed a $4.8 billion revenue run-rate in its fiscal third quarter, growing more than 55% year over year^[1].

A run-rate is a way of annualising recent revenue: take the revenue from a quarter or a month and scale it up to a full year at the same pace. It describes the speed of the business at a point in time rather than audited annual revenue, which is why software companies often use it to convey momentum.

The company also broke the total down, saying that its AI products and its Data Warehousing business had each contributed more than $1 billion^[1]. In other words, each of those two parts of the business had on its own reached the billion-dollar scale.

For a newer product it gave an early indicator: the Lakebase database had thousands of customers within six months of launch, and its revenue was growing at twice the pace of the Data Warehousing product^[1]. Comparing growth rates between two products describes how fast each is expanding, not how large it is — a young product growing quickly is not thereby earning more than an established one.

How much the valuation moved

CNBC reported that the $134 billion valuation was a 34% jump from the roughly $100 billion valuation of the round Databricks announced in August 2025^[2]. The two announcements fell in the same year, in August and in December 2025.

For a company that is not yet public, a valuation is the price investors were willing to put on the business in that round. A later round at a higher valuation means new investors paid more per share than in the previous one; 34% is the size of that step up between the two announcements^[2].

Reading the announcement

Taken together, the announcement gives a fairly complete snapshot: a private round of more than $4 billion, a $134 billion valuation, a revenue run-rate above $4.8 billion, more than $1 billion each from AI products and from data warehousing, and a database that reached thousands of customers within six months of launch and is growing faster than the older product^[1][2].

For anyone following large private software companies, the interest lies in what the numbers say about the shape of the business: data warehousing is the established core, AI products have grown to a comparable size, and the newest database product is still small but expanding at a quicker rate.

The sources and definitions matter as much as the figures. The financing terms, revenue run-rate and product numbers all come from the company's own announcement^[1], while the change in valuation was calculated by CNBC from the two rounds^[2]; and a run-rate is not the same thing as audited annual revenue. Keeping each number in its own frame is what makes the round legible.