Databricks recently announced a new round of financing, with its valuation soaring to $100 billion. However, this company, which has been around for more than a decade, does not seem eager to go public. Despite no plans for an initial public offering, Databricks continues to show strong growth. CEO Ali Ghodsi said that the company has the potential to become a company worth over $1 trillion in the future.
Image source note: The image is AI-generated, and the image licensing service is Midjourney.
Initially, Databricks was a private cloud platform created to run Apache Spark, a distributed computing framework developed by the AMPLab at the University of California, Berkeley. Although Spark is powerful, it is relatively complex to run, so it is quite appropriate for the creators of Spark to manage it. Over time, Databricks has evolved into a large data management platform covering more business areas, not limited to Spark and its related projects such as Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, GraphX, and MLlib.
Since the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) at the end of 2022, Databricks has also started to invest heavily in this field, striving to become a leader in it. In 2023, Databricks acquired AI factory MosaicML for $1.3 billion and launched multiple AI products, including AI/BI Genie, Agent Bricks, and Databricks Assistant. These initiatives have been well received by customers, and the company has added 5,000 new customers in the past two years. It is expected that revenue will grow from $1.6 billion in 2023 to $3.7 billion by 2025.
Currently, Databricks has about 9,000 employees, and Ghodsi expects to hire an additional 3,000 this year. As the company rapidly develops, more and more investors are showing great interest in Databricks. Although the company is not eager to raise funds, the attention from investors makes it difficult to refuse. Databricks completed a $1 billion Series J funding round in 2024, and the upcoming Series K funding round is expected to be no smaller in scale than the previous one.
Ghodsi mentioned during an interview with The Wall Street Journal that although his finance team advised him not to use this term, he believes Databricks has the potential to become a company worth over $1 trillion. To achieve this goal, the company needs to expand significantly in all aspects. At this stage, Databricks still faces many challenges to achieve this ambitious goal.
Key points:
🌟 Databricks' valuation reached $100 billion after recent financing, but it has not yet planned to go public.
🚀 Since the rise of generative AI, Databricks has increased its investment, launched multiple AI products, and seen a surge in customer numbers.
👥 The CEO said that Databricks has the potential to become a company worth over $1 trillion, but it needs to overcome many challenges.
