Two months after closing its buy of MosaicML, Databricks is back with a fresh round of funding that values the data-analytics company at $43 billion.
T. Rowe Price Associates led the $500 million round, which saw other existing investors take part including Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, ClearBridge Investments, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Fidelity Management & Research Co, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Octahedron Capital and Tiger Global.
Some new investors, such as NVIDIA, the chipmaker that is valued at over $1 trillion, and Capital One Ventures, also invested in the Series I round.
“Databricks and NVIDIA are building transformative AI technology and we’re excited about the business value and innovation we can bring to our customers as we partner closely with Jensen and his team at NVIDIA,” said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, in a statement Thursday.
Databricks’ $43 billion valuation is up from the last time the company sought capital. In 2021, Databricks collected $1.6 billion in a series H round led by Counterpoint Global. It was valued at $38 billion at that time.
Databricks wasn’t actively fundraising since it has about $2 billion of cash sitting on its balance sheet, Ghodsi said in an email to Coins2Day. The company noted substantial interest from its investors and partners over the past year, he said. Reports of a potential Databricks fundraise also brought in significant interest from the financial community, Ghodsi said. “When it became clear that new investors and a strategic investor wanted to join, it ultimately made sense for us to do an up-round since it had been almost two years, and the market has been so dynamic during that period,” Ghodsi said.
In mid-July, Databricks closed its $1.3 billion acquisition of MosaicML. The San Francisco company is looking to disrupt the AI sector. MosaicML provides software that lets startups use their own data to train and deploy large language models as well as other generative A.I.
Databricks, which had more than 10,000 global customers at the end of July, has long been considered an IPO candidate. The company is expected to consider listing its shares when the IPO market reopens. That might happen this month. On Wednesday, Arm, the chip designer owned by SoftBank Group, raised $4.87 billion when its offering priced at $51, at the top of its $47 to $51 price range. This values Arm, on a fully diluted basis, at about $54.5 billion. Grocery technology business Instacart and Klaviyo, a data and marketing automation firm, are scheduled to launch their offerings next week. If the IPOs trade well, this could signal a reawakening of the new issues market which has largely been dormant since 2021.
The current fundraise doesn’t change Databricks’ IPO plans “one way or another,” Ghodsi said. “We’re watching the market and economy closely and will go out when the time is right,” he said.