The IPO window may be open, but some former startups don’t seem to have any intention of going public. In a way it makes sense. IPOs are a traditional way to raise money, and if you can raise an exorbitant amount of money for your company without exposing it to public scrutiny, why would you?
Databricks proves that point. The data intelligence company has raised more than $4 billion in a Series L funding round at a $134 billion valuation. This is a 34% increase from the $100 billion valuation it achieved just three months ago.
This is Databricks’ third major venture funding in less than a year, and comes as the company focuses on building products that address the needs of the AI revolution: databases for AI agents, AI agent platforms, and apps that allow enterprises to build and deploy data and AI applications.
The company has invested heavily in a database for its AI agents known as Lakebase, which is based on the open source database Postgres (made possible through a $1 billion acquisition of a startup called Neon) and is aimed at enterprise developers’ vibe coding projects. Meanwhile, the company’s AI agent platform, Agent Bricks, aims to help businesses build and deploy AI agents that can leverage their data. The company also has big contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI to provide models within its enterprise products.
Series L rounds aren’t really common, but the fact that Datbricks was able to successfully raise venture funding at an ever-increasing valuation (this time last year it was valued at $60 billion) shows how strongly investors believe in the power of helping companies use data to fuel their AI efforts.
In fact, Databricks announced Tuesday that the company now generates more than $4.8 billion in run-rate revenue, up 55% year-over-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 in enterprises. Databricks will use this new capital to help customers build AI apps and agents based on their own data, leveraging Lakebase as the system of record, Databricks Apps as the user experience layer, and Agent Bricks to power multi-agent systems,” the company said in a press release.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the company plans to use the new funding to add thousands of new jobs in Asia, Europe and Latin America, and also hire more AI researchers.
“Enterprises are rapidly rethinking how they build intelligent applications, and the convergence of generative AI and new coding paradigms is opening the door to entirely new workloads,” Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said in a statement.
The round was led by Insight Partners, Fidelity and JPMorgan Asset Management. Also participating were Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, Blackstone, Coatue, GIC, MGX, NEA, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Robinhood Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Temasek, Thrive Capital and Winslow Capital.
