Databricks hits $188B valuation, extending its run as AI's favorite second act
Databricks has remade its image into an AI company and has published research on the cost savings of open weight AI models for coding. Databricks on Thursday announced a new round of funding that values the company at $188 billion . Databricks didn't disclose exactly how much it raised; it said the money isn't in its hands yet and that the round will close later in this summer.
Key Takeaways
- (Other outlets have since reported the raise is roughly $3 billion .
) While it's unusual for a company to announce before it gets the money, a VC tells TechCrunch that the deal is solid, with so many firms wanting in that the company had no reason to keep its shiny new valuation a secret.
- And roughly nine months before that, in December 2024, it raised what was a record-breaking round at the time of $10 billion at a $62 billion valuation.
Databricks has raised so many rounds over the years that this latest one became the subject of memes about running out of letters of the alphabet.
- The company began rolling out one AI product after another, like Lakebase, its database built for AI agents , and Unity, its AI gateway, along with a "meta-harness" called Omnigent that manages multiple agents.
Databricks also increasingly became known as one of the big examples of enterprises adopting more affordable Chinese-based open-weight models (models whose underlying code is published for anyone to use and modify) for cost control, one of the big trends of 2026 .
- 2 in particular, are now able to handle even the highest level of task difficulty" in coding, and at a total lower cost than proprietary models from Anthropic and OpenAI.
But it did surprise people by finding that the choice of harness - the agentic coding tool, like Codex or Claude Code, that wraps around a model and manages its context and instructions - equally impacted costs.
- As we previously reported, the AI effect is so strong these days, that even sandwich shop Jersey Mike's mentioned AI 22 times in its S-1 documents.
Stats & Key Facts
- #Databricks on Thursday announced a new round of funding that values the company at $188 billion .
- #(Other outlets have since reported the raise is roughly $3 billion .
- #Only five months ago, in February, Databricks closed a $5 billion Series L raise at a $134 billion valuation .
- #Five months before that, in September 2025, it raised $1B at $100 billion valuation .
(Other outlets have since reported the raise is roughly $3 billion . ) While it's unusual for a company to announce before it gets the money, a VC tells TechCrunch that the deal is solid, with so many firms wanting in that the company had no reason to keep its shiny new valuation a secret. In fact, Databricks has been on a year-and-a-half fundraising tear as it successfully transitioned its image into an AI provider and not just a yesteryear SaaS sensation.
Yesteryear being back in the BC times (Before ChatGPT). Only five months ago, in February, Databricks closed a $5 billion Series L raise at a $134 billion valuation . Five months before that, in September 2025, it raised $1B at $100 billion valuation .
And roughly nine months before that, in December 2024, it raised what was a record-breaking round at the time of $10 billion at a $62 billion valuation. Databricks has raised so many rounds over the years that this latest one became the subject of memes about running out of letters of the alphabet. "Turning on alerts for when we get a Series AA," one person posted.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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