Databricks Raises $1 Billion to Create Agentic Infrastructure

Data analytics firm Databricks is closing a $1 billion Series K funding round that values it at over $100 billion, up from $62 billion at the beginning of the year.

The company will use the new capital to accelerate its launch of new artificial intelligence (AI) products that help companies deploy AI apps and agents, it said in a Monday (Sept. 8) press release.

Databricks’ AI strategy includes expanding its product called Agent Bricks that builds AI agents based on the user’s enterprise data, launching its new Lakebase operational databases that are optimized for AI agents, making AI acquisitions and deepening its AI research, according to the release.

The company also said in the release that its revenue run-rate has grown more than 50% year over year to reach $4 billion, with its AI products’ revenue run-rate surpassing $1 billion.

“Our teams are putting up these results by building the data and AI infrastructure enterprises will rely on for decades,” Databricks Co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said in the release.

“With this new capital, we can move even faster with Agent Bricks, helping customers in every industry turn their data into production AI agents, and carry more momentum as we create the new Lakebase category, reinventing databases for AI agents,” Ghodsi said.

Databricks’ latest funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, MGX, Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management, per the release.

Insight Partners said in a Monday post on LinkedIn that it believes Ghodsi “has built a generational company that is driving transformative change for its 20,000+ customers.”

“At Insight’s inaugural ScaleUp:AI conference in 2022, Ali told our audience of AI luminaries and experts that ‘this is the very, very early days of AI being democratized in all of the software on the planet,’” the company said. “We are still in the early days three years later, but meaningfully further in the journey with Databricks helping shape the future of AI.”

Databricks said Aug. 19 that it had signed a term sheet for its Series K round and expected the round to value it at over $100 billion.

Ghodsi said at the time that the company had seen “tremendous investor interest” because of the momentum behind its AI products, which was driven by “unprecedented demand” for AI apps and agents.

Databricks closed its Series J funding round in January, saying it took in $10 billion in equity financing along with a $5.25 billion credit facility from several of the world’s biggest banks.

That round valued the company at $62 billion.