Databricks raises $4 billion at a $134 billion valuation as its AI business ramps up

The IPO window may have crack openbut it seems some old startups have no plans to go public. It makes sense, in a way: IPOs were traditionally a way to raise money, and if you can raise ungodly amounts of money without having to subject your company to public scrutiny, why do it?

Databricks proves it: the data intelligence company just raised more than $4 billion in a Series L funding round at a valuation of $134 billion, an increase of 34% from the $100 billion valuation it achieved. made only three months ago.

This is Databricks’ third major fundraising in less than a year, and it comes as the company focuses on building products that meet the needs of the AI ​​revolution: a database for AI agents, an AI agent platform, and applications that enable companies to create and deploy AI data and applications.

The company is investing heavily in its AI agent database, known as Lakebase, which is based on the open source Postgres database (powered by billion dollar acquisition from a startup called Neon), and is aimed at enterprise developers’ vibe-coding projects. Meanwhile, its AI agent platform, Agent Bricks, aims to help businesses create and deploy AI agents that can leverage their data. The company has also secured large contracts worth hundreds of millions with AI labs. Anthropic And OpenAI offer their models within its corporate products.

Series L rounds aren’t exactly common, but the fact that Databricks was able to raise venture capital at ever-increasing valuations (it was valued at 60 billion dollars this time last year) indicates how strongly investors believe in the power of helping companies use data to fuel their AI efforts.

Indeed, Databricks said Tuesday that it now generates overall revenue of more than $4.8 billion, up 55% from the previous year, with more than $1 billion of that coming from its AI products.

“The parallel rise of vibe coding and generative AI is accelerating the development of data-intelligent applications across the enterprise. Databricks will use this new capital to help customers build AI applications and agents on top of their proprietary data, leveraging Lakebase as a system of record, Databricks applications as a user experience layer, and Agent Bricks to power multi-agent systems,” the company said in a press release.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company will also use these new funds to create thousands of new jobs in Asia, Europe and Latin America, as well as to recruit more AI researchers.

“Businesses are rapidly reinventing how they build intelligent applications, and the convergence of generative AI with new coding paradigms opens the door to entirely new workloads,” Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, said in a statement.

The round was led by Insight Partners, Fidelity and JP Morgan Asset Management. Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, Blackstone, Coatue, GIC, MGX, NEA, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Robinhood Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Temasek, Thrive Capital and Winslow Capital also participated.