Four months ago, Databricks, which successfully secured large-scale investment, has once again attracted market attention. The data and AI platform company Databricks recently announced that it has raised over $4 billion (approximately 5.76 trillion won) through Series L financing. This round of financing has caused the company's valuation to soar to $134 billion (approximately 193 trillion won), achieving a significant increase from last year's valuation of $100 billion (approximately 144 trillion won) in a short period.
This round of financing was led by Insight Partners, Fidelity Management, and JPMorgan Chase, with participation from several investors including the venture capital arm of Robinhood. The venture capital community generally believes that Databricks' profitability supports its high valuation. Databricks revealed that its annualized revenue for the third quarter has exceeded $4.8 billion (approximately 6.91 trillion won), with a total revenue retention rate exceeding 140% driven by the growth in customer numbers and the expansion of spending by existing customers.
The core of Databricks' growth lies in the optimized data infrastructure and solution suite for AI capabilities. The newly launched managed database "Lakebase" in June of this year was adopted by thousands of companies immediately after its launch, and its performance in enhancing AI data processing is commendable. Lakebase also features an online feature service that supplies data to AI models for efficient processing by "features". Whenever new information is injected, the system can update features in real-time, helping to maintain the accuracy of machine learning models.
This financing will focus on upgrading three core products, including Lakebase - "Agent Bricks" and "Databricks Apps". Among them, Agent Bricks is a development tool that can transform AI models into dedicated intelligent agents, capable of automatically generating synthetic training data and providing performance benchmarking capabilities. Enterprises can thus obtain the foundation for building customized AI applications based on intelligent agents.
Databricks Apps significantly enhance the speed of AI application development through components such as automated authentication and access control. Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi emphasized: "We are integrating the reliable data infrastructure based on Lakebase, intuitive application tools, and advanced intelligent agent functionalities to build a unified platform for next-generation intelligent applications."
In addition to product development, this round of funding will also be used to enhance internal liquidity, support basic AI research, and strategic acquisitions. Its "lake-house" data architecture strategy is also built on the core technology acquired from the acquisition of serverless database startup Neon in May this year, injecting new momentum for future growth. Ali Ghodsi stated in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the IPO timeline is "not yet determined," leaving room for subsequent financing. Over the past two years, Databricks has raised a total of $14 billion (approximately 20.1 trillion Korean won), continuously consolidating its competitive advantage in the global data and AI market.