{"id":319546,"date":"2025-12-16T18:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/319546\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T18:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:58:08","slug":"databricks-raises-4b-at-134b-valuation-as-its-ai-business-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/319546\/","title":{"rendered":"Databricks raises $4B at $134B valuation as its AI business heats up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The IPO window may have <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/11\/04\/beta-technologies-ends-first-day-on-nyse-in-the-green-and-1b-raised\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cracked<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/09\/17\/eric-bakers-long-winding-road-to-taking-stubhub-public\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">open<\/a>, but it seems some former startups have no intention of going public. Makes sense, in a way: IPOs were traditionally a way to raise money, and if you can manage to raise ungodly amounts without having to put your company through public scrutiny, why do it?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Databricks is proving that point: The data intelligence company has just raised more than $4 billion in a Series L funding round at a $134 billion valuation \u2014 up 34% from the $100 billion valuation that it <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/09\/08\/databricks-confirms-new-100b-valuation-on-4b-arr\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">achieved just three months ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is Databricks\u2019 third major venture fundraise in less than a year, and it comes as the company focuses on building products that address the needs of the AI revolution: a database for AI agents, an AI agent platform, and apps that let companies build and deploy data and AI applications. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company is investing heavily in its database for AI agents, known as Lakebase, which is based on the open source database Postgres (enabled by <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/05\/14\/databricks-to-buy-open-source-database-startup-neon-for-1b\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the $1 billion acquisition<\/a> of a startup called Neon), and is aimed at corporate developers\u2019 vibe-coding projects. Meanwhile, its AI agent platform, Agent Bricks, is aimed at helping businesses build and deploy AI agents that can tap into their data. The company has also struck hefty deals worth hundreds of millions with AI labs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/anthropic-databricks-team-up-in-scramble-for-ai-revenue-e15fe750\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Anthropic<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/09\/25\/databricks-will-bake-openai-models-into-its-products-in-100m-bet-to-spur-enterprise-adoption\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI<\/a> to offer their models within its enterprise products.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Series L rounds aren\u2019t really common, but the fact that Databricks has managed to raise venture funding at ever-increasing valuations (it was valued <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/12\/17\/databricks-raises-10b-as-it-barrels-toward-an-ipo\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">at $60 billion<\/a> around this time last year) indicates how strongly investors believe in the power of helping companies use data to fuel their AI efforts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Indeed, Databricks on Tuesday said it now generates run-rate revenue of more than $4.8 billion, up 55% from a year earlier, of which more than $1 billion came from its AI products. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe parallel rise of vibe coding and generative AI is accelerating the development of data-intelligent applications in the enterprise. Databricks will use this new capital to help customers build AI apps and agents on their proprietary data, leveraging Lakebase as the system of record, Databricks Apps as the user experience layer, and Agent Bricks to power multi-agent systems,\u201d the company said in a press release.<\/p>\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Wall Street Journal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/databricks-is-raising-funds-at-134-billion-valuation-4a2efaea?st=gxgVf7&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">reports<\/a> that the company will also use the new money to add thousands of new jobs in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, as well as bring on more AI researchers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEnterprises are rapidly reimagining how they build intelligent applications, and the convergence of generative AI with new coding paradigms is opening the door to entirely new workloads,\u201d Databricks\u2019 co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The round was led by Insight Partners, Fidelity, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, Blackstone, Coatue, GIC, MGX, NEA, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Robinhood Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Temasek, Thrive Capital, and Winslow Capital also participated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The IPO window may have cracked open, but it seems some former startups have no intention of going&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,10606,733,4308,126353,62000,106743,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-319546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-agents","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-database-management","13":"tag-databricks","14":"tag-insight-partners","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}