The funding round was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates and had participation from the company's existing investors along with new investors, namely Capital One Ventures, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Ghisallo Capital Management, and Nvidia
Data and AI firm Databricks secures over $500m in a Series I funding round at a valuation of $43bn. (Credit: Reto Scheiwiller from Pixabay)
US-based data and artificial intelligence (AI) company Databricks said that it has secured more than $500m in a Series I funding round at a valuation of $43bn.
The financing round was led by funds and accounts advised by investment management firm T. Rowe Price Associates.
Databricks’ existing investors also participated in the financing. These include Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research, ClearBridge Investments, GIC, funds and accounts managed by Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Franklin Templeton, Octahedron Capital, and Tiger Global.
Besides, the funding round saw the participation of new investors, namely Capital One Ventures, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Ghisallo Capital Management, and Nvidia.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: “Enterprise data is a goldmine for generative AI. Databricks is doing incredible work with NVIDIA technology to accelerate data processing and generative AI models.”
In 2021, Databricks raised $1bn in a Series G funding round led by Franklin Templeton at a post-money valuation of $28bn.
The company’s Lakehouse platform unifies data, analytics, and AI on a single platform. It enables customers to regulate, manage, and gain insights from enterprise data and create their own generative AI solutions faster.
Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said: “The commitment from long-term focused strategic and financial partners reflects Databricks’ continued momentum, the rapid customer adoption of the Databricks Lakehouse, and the success customers are seeing from moving to a unified data and AI platform.
“Databricks and NVIDIA are building transformative AI technology, and we’re excited about the business value and innovation we can bring to our customers.”
In June 2023, Databricks agreed to acquire generative AI platform MosaicML in a deal worth about $1.3bn. It was finalised in the following month.
Through the combination, both companies aimed to make generative AI accessible for all organisations to enable them to develop, own and secure generative AI models with their own data.