Databricks secures $5B in equity and $2B in debt at a $134B valuation, doubling down on enterprise AI as revenue surges 65% to $5.4B.
Databricks said Monday it had raised $5 billion in new equity at a $134 billion valuation, fortifying its balance sheet as it accelerates investment in artificial intelligence products for enterprise customers.
The company, already among the world’s most valuable privately held technology firms, also secured roughly $2 billion in new debt capacity. Its annualized revenue run rate climbed 65 percent to $5.4 billion in the fourth quarter.
The combined $7 billion capital infusion leaves the company “really well capitalized, in case there’s a winter coming,” Chief Executive Officer Ali Ghodsi said in an interview..
Though widely viewed as a candidate for an initial public offering, Ghodsi said remaining private allows Databricks to invest aggressively in growth without the volatility and scrutiny of public markets. The company plans to provide liquidity options to employees later this year using its balance sheet.
The outsized funding round comes amid a global sell-off in software stocks, fueled in part by investor anxiety that rapidly advancing AI tools could disrupt established players rather than benefit them.
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Ghodsi said strong investor demand reflected confidence that Databricks would benefit from AI adoption. “Anything that the AI layer directly uses is going to increase in exploding consumption because you have these agents running around doing it,” he said.
Databricks offers a platform that enables organizations to ingest, analyze and build AI applications using complex data from multiple sources. It competes with Snowflake and is frequently mentioned alongside SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic as a high-profile private company that could eventually test public markets.
An eventual IPO would signal further thawing in the new-issues market, as richly valued technology companies gauge investor appetite amid a rebounding equity market and easing interest rates.
The company said its AI products currently generate $1.4 billion in annualized revenue. Proceeds from the latest round will help accelerate the development of Lakebase, its AI-focused database, and Genie, its conversational assistant.
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Not all market watchers see an IPO as imminent. If late-stage private capital values a company at $134 billion and allows it to continue expanding without “quarterly theater,” said Michael Ashley Schulman, partner and chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, “you stay private and preserve control.”
JPMorgan Chase led the debt financing. Goldman Sachs, Glade Brook Capital, Morgan Stanley, Neuberger Berman and the Qatar Investment Authority participated in the equity round.
