Databricks rides AI demand, investor confidence to $100B valuation

Databricks announced on Tuesday a new funding round that would lead to a 61% surge in its valuation to more than $100 billion. The new funding round suggests strong investor demand for artificial intelligence startups.

The analytics firm previously raised another $10 billion less than a year ago, making it one of the largest venture capital funding rounds in history at the time. The funding round raised the company’s valuation to $62 billion.

Databricks bets big on artificial intelligence

Databricks did not reveal the exact amount it is raising as it signed a term sheet for a Series K round. The firm’s CFO, Dave Conte, revealed in June that 50 of Databricks’ 15,000 customers were spending over $10 million annually in the first quarter of 2025. He argued that the company wants to combine revenue growth and product velocity with profitability. 

Ghodsi also disclosed that the firm would hire an additional 3,000 workers this year. The firm, with 15,000 customers, makes payments to big companies such as energy giant Shell, Block, and electric-vehicle maker Rivian.

The analytics company disclosed that a portion of its latest initiative will be used to develop products and for mergers and acquisitions in the AI industry. Databricks said it’s working to get involved with corporations and governments that are already rushing to leverage efficiencies from the rapidly growing AI sector.

The tech company introduced its new product, Agent Bricks, during the June Data + AI Summit. It said the product builds production AI agents optimized for users’ enterprise data. 

Databricks also introduced Lakebase, an operational database (OLTP) that is built on open source Postgres and optimised for AI agents. It hopes the product will support future AI acquisitions and deepen AI research.

Ghodsi noted that the company is seeing increased investor interest because of its drive towards its AI products. He believes that any company can securely transition into AI apps and agents to boost revenue growth, efficient operations, and allow users to make less risky decisions.

The data company reported $2.6 billion in gains in the fiscal year that ended in January. It also had a net retention rate of more than 140%, which remained unchanged from last year.

Databricks continues partnering with companies to boost AI revenue

In June, the AI company agreed to continue its partnership with Microsoft through its first-party service, Azure. Judson Althoff, executive vice president at Microsoft, said that democratizing data and AI helps organizations seeking to drive innovation and unlock greater business opportunity. 

In March, the data company also signed a five-year partnership deal with Anthropic to offer the firm models and services through Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. The deal will include Data Mosaic AI and aims to include Anthropic’s models in over 10,000 companies. 

As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, the initiative is also meant to help customers build and deploy AI agents that reason over their data. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei argued that 2025 will see remarkable advances in AI agents capable of working independently on complex tasks. He believes the new partnership will allow the company’s customers to build even more powerful data-driven agents.

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