Databricks

Databricks is a data intelligence platform company founded in 2013 by the original creators of Apache Spark at UC Berkeley. Databricks provides a unified analytics platform that combines data warehousing, data engineering, machine learning, and AI on a single cloud-based platform.

Databricks' Lakehouse architecture merges the best elements of data lakes and data warehouses, providing a single platform for all data and AI workloads. The company offers Mosaic AI, an integrated suite for building and deploying AI applications including model training, fine-tuning, RAG, and AI agent development. Databricks' acquisition of MosaicML in 2023 for $1.3 billion brought deep expertise in efficient model training. It has since extended the platform with Lakebase, a managed operational database aimed at AI agents, and has increasingly championed cheaper open-weight models — publishing benchmarks arguing that open models can now match proprietary systems on hard tasks at lower cost. In August 2026 Databricks closed a $5 billion strategic round led by Coatue, joined by Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price and new investor Sixth Street Growth, earmarked for Lakebase, the Genie AI coworker, and its Unity AI Gateway. Chief executive Ali Ghodsi had set out to raise $1 billion; investor demand ran to roughly $15 billion. He has said he still intends to take the company public eventually, without committing to a timetable.

Databricks competes primarily with Snowflake in the data platform market and has become the preferred platform for organizations that want to build custom AI solutions on their own data. The platform's integration of Delta Lake (open-source storage layer), MLflow (open-source ML lifecycle management), and Unity Catalog (data governance) creates a comprehensive foundation for enterprise AI initiatives.