Databricks secured $5 billion in funding at a $190 billion valuation, the company announced August 13, marking its second major raise this year as the data and AI software firm competes with Snowflake and Google Cloud.
The round closed at a $190 billion valuation, up from $188 billion when the term sheet was signed July 16. Databricks had raised earlier in the year at a $134 billion valuation, a jump of 42 percent in six months. The company has not disclosed the investors in this round.
Databricks sells a platform for data analytics and generative AI workloads built on Apache Spark, positioning itself in a market where Snowflake and Google Cloud's BigQuery compete for enterprise spending. The company generated $800 million in annual recurring revenue as of late 2024, according to public statements by Chief Executive Officer Ali Ghodsi. That metric has become standard currency for assessing venture-backed software firms valued north of $100 billion.
Funding velocity in the AI infrastructure and data space has accelerated sharply since late 2023. Databricks' first raise this year at $134 billion put it briefly ahead of Stripe and other privately held unicorns. The $190 billion post-money valuation now places it among the most expensive private software companies on record, comparable to OpenAI's internal valuations disclosed in secondary markets earlier this year.
The company has not gone public, and Ghodsi has said in past interviews that Databricks would remain private for the near term. The firm operates in a space where capital availability for data infrastructure and AI training tools has continued. Benchmark Venture Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Andreessen Horowitz and other large check writers have continued backing data platform companies at rising multiples.
Databricks' $5 billion haul in a single tranche is among the largest single private funding rounds on record. Few venture-backed software firms have raised amounts that large; most large late-stage rounds come in the $1 billion to $2 billion range. The company is doubling down on customer acquisition and product development in generative AI at a moment when enterprises are moving spend from legacy data warehouses toward unified platforms.
Two consecutive raises in six months at valuations climbing from $134 billion to $190 billion show investor conviction that AI workloads and data governance will require substantial infrastructure spending over the next decade. The $56 billion valuation gap between the two rounds this year is larger than the market capitalization of many mature software public companies. If Databricks maintains current burn and revenue growth rates, the path to profitability and an eventual public offering depends on sustained enterprise adoption of its platform for both traditional analytics and generative AI inference.
