Databricks has closed $15.3 billion in financing, valuing the company at $62 billion. JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley led the financing, which included $10 billion in Series J equity funding and $5.25 billion in debt financing.
The new funding will support the development of AI products, international expansion, acquisitions, and liquidity for current and former employees. CEO Ali Ghodsi said that AI infrastructure has helped organisations optimise operations and manage risks.
Last month, the company raised $10 billion in a funding round led by Thrive Capital. Leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and GIC, participated in the round.
Since its founding 12 years ago, the San Francisco-based company has raised $19 billion in total funding. Participants in the Series J round include Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Temasek, Macquarie Capital, and Meta, which have joined as strategic investors.
Databricks’ platform enables businesses to combine and analyse large datasets and support projects such as retail forecasting, disease detection, and climate change mitigation. The platform also standardises structured and unstructured data for use in machine learning models.
“We are excited to deepen our commitment to Databricks through this follow-on investment, underscoring our strong conviction in the company’s leadership and strategic positioning,” said Mohammed Saif Al-Sowaidi, CEO of QIA. “At QIA, we are expanding our exposure across the AI ecosystem and believe Databricks has become the leading platform within the AI infrastructure software space.”
Meta’s participation reflects a broader trend of large technology companies investing in AI ventures, following similar investments like Meta and Amazon’s funding of Scale AI.
The data and AI company is anticipated to go public this year, a development that could potentially unsettle Snowflake, a major player in the AI cloud data space.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi, however, downplayed any competition with Snowflake, stating that Databricks has significantly outpaced its rival. “We had a program called Snow Melt to target Snowflake, but that’s behind us now,” he said in a recent interview.
Meanwhile, Anil Bhasin, vice president of India and the SAARC region at Databricks, announced his departure from the company after a tenure of more than two and a half years. In a statement, Bhasin reflected on his experience and expressed gratitude for his role in building the Databricks brand in India.
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