Databricks, a data analytics platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI), announced on Thursday that it has secured over $500 million in a recent funding round.
This funding round has valued the company at an impressive $43 billion, making it one of the year’s most significant funding events for private tech companies, driven by growing optimism in AI.
The funding round, led by T. Rowe Price, may very well be the final private funding round for Databricks as the company gears up for a potential entry into the public market.
Notably, chipmaker Nvidia and credit card firm Capital One Financial also participated in this substantial funding round.
Databricks plans to utilize the newly acquired funds to expand its foundation models in collaboration with Nvidia, a key player in creating the core computing chips that power AI models.
Ali Ghodsi, the CEO of Databricks, emphasized the importance of having models specialized for specific tasks, particularly for their enterprise clients.
In addition to T. Rowe Price, several renowned names in the venture capital industry, including Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, Fidelity Management & Research, and Tiger Global, also participated in this funding round.
AI has become a buzzword in the tech industry, attracting interest and investment from both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Databricks, in particular, has focused on developing a chatbot capable of analyzing business data, such as sales transactions and written reports.
They introduced an AI assistant called LakehouseIQ in June, designed to interpret natural language queries instead of requiring users to use computer code.
Furthermore, Databricks recently completed its acquisition of MosaicML, a generative AI startup, in a deal worth $1.3 billion.
Databricks reported an impressive 50% year-over-year increase in revenue for the second quarter ending in July and boasts more than 10,000 customers globally.
This new valuation represents a significant increase of over 13% compared to the company’s worth of $38 billion after its last funding round in 2021.
Since its inception, Databricks has successfully raised a total of $4 billion in funding.
(Source: Reuters)
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