TL;DRDatabricks is in talks to raise at $165-175bn, four months after closing at $134bn. CEO Ghodsi has privately signalled an IPO as soon as next year. Discussions are early-stage and the round has not closed.
Databricks is in talks to raise a new funding round at a valuation of between $165 billion and $175 billion, The Information reported on Monday. The round could begin as soon as next month and would represent a 23% to 31% increase from the $134 billion valuation the company achieved in February.
That February round was itself enormous: roughly $5 billion, including $2 billion in debt, making it one of the largest private raises in the AI sector. Databricks is now seeking to raise again before the money from the last round is spent, a pattern that has become standard among AI infrastructure companies racing to lock in valuations ahead of public listings.
The numbers
Databricks said in February that it had surpassed $5.4 billion in annualised revenue run rate, up 65% year on year. The company sells a data lakehouse platform that combines data warehousing and data lake capabilities, used by enterprises to store, process, and analyse the massive datasets that AI models require.
