Databricks Raises $5B at $190B Valuation
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- Databricks raised $5 billion at a $190 billion valuation, announced Thursday, with CEO Ali Ghodsi saying the company originally wanted just $1 billion before receiving $15 billion in investor interest after The Information reported on the fundraise during their June conference
- The round was led by Coatue and included Blackstone, MGX, various T. Rowe Price accounts, and new investor Sixth Street (founded by former Goldman Sachs CIO Alan Waxman), with about two dozen VCs participating
- Databricks reported $7 billion in annualized run-rate revenue growing 80% year-over-year and is cash-flow positive, with its core cloud data warehouse contributing $1.5 billion at 100% YoY growth
- The company's AI agent database Lakebase, launched June 2025, hit $100 million in revenue run-rate within months, while its AI chatbot tool Genie is "insanely popular" per Ghodsi
- Databricks has multi-billion dollar cloud commitments with all three major hyperscalers, a 100-person AI research team, and recently acquired Panther (AI cybersecurity), Electric (PGlite/Postgres), and two other startups in 2025
- Ghodsi told CNBC he still wants to take Databricks public but is focused on AI investing; the company has raised $20 billion total over the past 20 months
Why it matters: Databricks was already cash-flow positive at $7B run-rate, making this $5B raise pure war-chest building for AI infrastructure and M&A. Raising 5x what it wanted because $15B of demand was hard to refuse shows how overheated late-stage AI deals have become—and why cash-generative AI companies still prefer private markets over going public.
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