Databricks stated this morning that the company was raising new funding at a higher valuation than previously reported. The data and AI-focused business have raised $1.6 billion at a $38 billion value, according to the company. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Databricks was looking for new funding at that price. Counterpoint Global, a Morgan Stanley fund, led the Series H. Baillie Gifford, UC Investments, and ClearBridge were among the other new investors. A number of previous investors also contributed money to the round.
Databricks has now raised a total of $3.5 billion in private finance. Its current round of funding comes just seven months after the late-stage business secured $1 billion at a valuation of $28 billion. Its current valuation represents a monthly increase in the paper value of more than $1 billion.
The startup, which creates both open source and commercial products for combining structured and unstructured data in one place, sees its market as a new technological category. The system is referred to as a data “lakehouse” by Databricks, which is a hybrid of a data lake and a data warehouse.
“[Data lakehouses] are a new category, and we believe there will be a lot of suppliers in this space. As a result, it’s a land grab. In an interview with TechCrunch, he remarked, “We want to fast race to develop it and complete the vision.” Ghodsi also noted that he is competing against well-funded rivals and that he needs the finances to compete well.
“And, you know, we’re not fighting against some tiny company looking for seed money to construct this. “There are a variety of [big, established] vendors,” he explained. Snowflake, Amazon, Google, and others are among those vying for a slice of the burgeoning market sector identified by Databricks.
The company’s success suggests that it is on the right track.
As part of its fundraising announcement, Databricks said that the company has crossed the $600 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) milestone. To better highlight how swiftly business is developing at scale, it concluded 2020 with a $425 million ARR.
According to the corporation, the new ARR statistic reflects a 75 percent increase year over year.
For a firm of its size, that’s impressive; according to the Bessemer Cloud Index, top-quartile public software companies are increasing at a rate of roughly 44% year over year. Those businesses are valued at roughly 22 times their projected revenues.
