The leak that changed everything
It started with a single news article. Not a product launch, not a customer win — just a report from The Information that Databricks was raising money. That was enough to set off a chain reaction CEO Ali Ghodsi never anticipated.
“We wanted to raise $1 billion, but then The Information printed this article saying that Databricks is doing a big fundraise,” Ghodsi told TechCrunch. “We were heads down with our conference, and we were not actually at all focused on fundraising.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Databricks was in the middle of its annual user conference in June, and Ghodsi’s phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. “My phone blew up. It was like the worst timing for us because we were busy with our conference,” he recalled.
But here’s the thing about having too many investors pounding on your door — it’s a pretty good problem to have. What started as a modest $1 billion target quickly snowballed into something far bigger. “The interest level was just insane. Just from this select group of investors that we looked at, there was $15 billion of interest,” Ghodsi said.
From $1 billion to $5 billion: how the round grew
When you’ve got that much demand, telling longtime backers they can’t get in is a quick way to burn bridges. So Databricks made a pragmatic call: issue more stock. In July, the company announced it had closed a new round at a $188 billion valuation, though it kept the exact amount under wraps at the time.
On Thursday, the full picture emerged. Databricks raised $5 billion at a valuation that ticked up to a clean $190 billion. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price accounts, and newcomer Sixth Street Growth — the firm founded by former Goldman Sachs chief investment officer Alan Waxman. All told, about two dozen VCs got a piece of the deal.
Why investors were so eager
The answer is simple: Databricks looks like a sure bet. Ghodsi says the company has hit $7 billion in annualized run-rate revenue, growing at 80% and already cash-flow positive. Its core cloud data warehouse product alone generates $1.5 billion of that run-rate and is still expanding at 100% year-over-year.
Then there’s the AI angle. Lakebase, the company’s database for AI agents launched in June 2025, has already reached a $100 million revenue run-rate. And Genie, its AI chatbot for business analysis, is — in Ghodsi’s words — “insanely popular.”
Why raise more when the business is thriving?
That’s the obvious question. Databricks had already pulled in $20 billion over the past 20 months. But AI doesn’t come cheap.
“AI research is very expensive,” Ghodsi said, noting the company employs a 100-person AI research team. Databricks also has multi-billion dollar cloud commitments with all three major hyperscalers — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
On top of that, Databricks is on an acquisition spree. This week it snapped up Electric, the company behind the lightweight Postgres database PGlite. In June it bought AI cybersecurity firm Panther, and in March it acquired two more startups. “We do a lot of M&A,” Ghodsi said simply.
The new math of mega-rounds
There was a time when a $1 billion raise was considered massive — a headline-grabbing feat that took months of courting investors. In today’s AI gold rush, that number barely moves the needle. Startups are walking out of the gate with billion-dollar seed rounds.
Databricks’ private fundraising has become something of a running joke in Silicon Valley. When the company announced this round last month, observers quipped online that it had raised so many times it was running out of letters of the alphabet to name the rounds.
What’s next for Databricks?
Ghodsi told CNBC he still wants to take the company public eventually. With this many investors on the cap table, all of whom will want an exit at some point, he doesn’t have much choice.
But for now, the focus is on investing in AI — and doing it out of the public eye. Given the expenses involved, staying private a while longer makes sense. And when you can command $15 billion in instant interest on your own terms, why rush?
For more on how AI companies are reshaping fundraising, check out our analysis of AI startup funding trends and the latest on Databricks competitors in the data lakehouse space.
