Databricks, the Data and AI company, has announced a $1.6 Billion round of funding to accelerate innovation and adoption of the data lakehouse. The Series H funding, led by Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), puts Databricks at a $38 billion post-money valuation.
Counterpoint Global is joined by other new investors including Baillie Gifford, ClearBridge Investments and UC Investments (Office of the Chief Investment Officer of the Regents of the University of California). Existing investors participating in the round include Andreessen Horowitz, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Coatue Management, Fidelity Management & Research, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Greenoaks, Octahedron Capital, funds and accounts managed by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Tiger Global Management and Whale Rock Capital Management.
Databricks also announced the appointment of former Salesforce executive, Andy Kofoid, as President of Global Field Operations.
“AT&T has been changing the way people live, work and play for the past 144 years. As part of our goal to create new and exciting customer experiences that connect people with who and what they love, AT&T is modernizing our data ecosystem and migrating it to the cloud. This involves moving petabytes of data to the cloud. We leverage Data Lakehouse in Databricks for our most granular data as well as real-time data pipelines supporting key AI/ML applications,” said Andy Markus, Chief Data Officer, AT&T
“This new investment is a reflection of the rapid adoption and incredible customer demand we’re seeing for the Databricks Lakehouse Platform and underscores the industry and investor confidence in our vision – that lakehouse is the data architecture of the future,” said Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks. “This marks a thrilling new chapter that will allow us to accelerate our pace of innovation and further invest in the success of data-driven organizations on their journey to the lakehouse.”
“We’re incredibly excited to partner with the world class team at Databricks whose lakehouse platform is reinventing analytics with the speed and scale customers require today. We believe the company is well positioned to become a platform of choice among forward thinking enterprises that want to transform valuable data into strategic business insights.” – Dennis Lynch, Head of Counterpoint Global
“Databricks is an outstanding example of the innovation and pioneering spirit that flourishes throughout the University of California system and we are excited to support the next phase of a meteoric journey that first sparked at Berkeley,” said Jagdeep Singh Bachher, Chief Investment Officer of the UC Regents for UC Investments. “This investment is a testament to the extraordinary opportunity we see for Databricks to shape the future of data and AI with the creation of the data lakehouse category. We look forward to partnering with the Databricks team to enable tens of thousands of future UC students to be the next generation of innovators.”
Other existing and new Investors that participated in this funding round include: Alta Park Capital, a suite of BNY Mellon funds, Discovery Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Flucas Ventures, Gaingels, Geodesic, Green Bay Ventures, the House Fund, Insight Partners, and New Enterprise Associates.
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