Databricks Inc. is in the process of finalizing a funding round that will value it at $118 billion.
The company announced the deal on Thursday without disclosing the amount that it’s raising. According to the Wall Street Journal, the round will add $3 billion to Databricks’ balance sheet. Coatue is leading the investment with contributions from new and existing backers.
Databricks operates a cloud data platform that enterprises use to store and analyze business information. Over the past few years, the company has added numerous artificial intelligence features to speed up common analytics tasks. Databricks will use its new funding to further expand its AI capabilities.
The initiative will place particular emphasis on improving Genie, a suite of AI assistants that the company debuted in March. One of the tools in the lineup helps developers generate code such as SQL queries. Another makes it possible to create custom AI agents optimized for specific data science tasks.
Databricks debuted the newest addition to the suite, Genie One, earlier this year. It enables users to query records stored in Databricks and external platforms using natural language prompts. Genie One rolled out alongside a second new tool, Genie Ontology, that automatically organizes business records into a form that lends itself to analysis.
The company said its engineering push will also prioritize two other products: Lakebase and Unity AI Gateway.
Lakebase is a managed relational database that AI agents can use to store their information. Unity AI Gateway, in turn, is a governance tool for ensuring that AI agents meet quality requirements. It applies cybersecurity guardrails, blocks harmful prompt responses and performs related tasks. The tool also identifies opportunities to lower agent-related hardware costs.
“Enterprises are moving from tokenmaxxing to valuemaxxing,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ali Ghodsi. “They don’t want to burn expensive tokens on the smartest model for every task — they want the best outcome per dollar. That means having the freedom to choose the right AI for the job.”
Databricks will use some of the proceeds from the new round to make acquisitions. Lakebase is the fruit of a $1 billion startup purchase that the company inked last May. A few months later, Databricks expanded the platform’s capabilities by buying another startup called Mooncake Labs Inc. The deal bought the company technology that reduces the need to move data between applications and lowers the associated costs.
Databricks has already signed a term sheet for its latest funding round and expects to close it later this year.
Image: Databricks
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