Databricks Raises $5B at $190B Valuation, Far Above Original Plan
Databricks originally planned to raise around $1 billion in its latest funding round. Investors, however, pushed for as much as $15 billion in demand, and the company ultimately settled on a $5 billion raise at a $190 billion valuation.
CEO Ali Ghodsi framed the oversized round as a reflection of just how costly it is to compete in AI right now — from compute and talent to infrastructure buildout. Rather than stick to its original, more conservative target, Databricks opted to take on significantly more capital while investor appetite was there.
The raise cements Databricks as one of the most highly valued private AI infrastructure companies, alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, all of which have raised massive rounds this year to fund the underlying costs of building and scaling AI systems.