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The valuation is a 34% jump from the funding round announced in August, which valued the company at $100 billion. At the time, Databricks became one of a handful of private companies to surpass a $100 billion valuation, after SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI.
Databricks said it plans to use the capital to support customer app building as artificial intelligence accelerates development. It wants to be the go-to company for organizations looking to build and run AI agents that can carry out work, Ali Ghodsi, Databricks’ co-founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview.
“It’s kind of a land grab, with do-it-yourself winning right now. So that’s a big opportunity,” he said.
Despite the fresh capital infusion, Ghodsi said he wouldn’t rule out a 2026 initial public offering. Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which build generative AI models that are available to Databricks clients, have both reportedly discussed going public in 2026.
Investors have become attentive to the financial strains required to build data centers that can accommodate Anthropic and OpenAI.
“I think that across the board, we will see massive value from AI,” Ghodsi said. “Does it justify the level of all the data center and energy investments? I don’t know. I would be a little bit worried that we’re ahead of ourselves.”
Tune in at 4:15 p.m. ET as Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi joins CNBC TV to discuss the latest funding round and valuation. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
The company said it topped a $4.8 billion revenue run-rate during its fiscal third quarter and is growing 55% year-over-year. That figure is also up from the $4 billion revenue run-rate announced earlier this year. Growth accelerated from the prior quarter, with a noticeable uptick in AI revenue, Ghodsi said.
More staid parts of the business are also gaining traction. Over 1,000 Databricks clients are now using the startup’s Lakebase database software for quickly make note of new incoming data, he said.
Databricks is among a growing list of companies that have opted to stay private for longer as private markets offer more funding opportunities, alongside Epic Games and Stripe.
Insight Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company and JPMorgan Asset Management led the new Databricks round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz.
Databricks was founded in 2013 in San Francisco. It ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list.
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
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