Databricks closes $15.3B financing at $62B valuation, Meta joins as ‘strategic investor’

Data analytics platform Databricks has confirmed that it has closed a previously announced $10 billion in Series J equity financing at a $62 billion valuation.

The San Francisco-based company also added a further $5.25 billion in debt financing, funded by JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, among other “leading financial institutions and alternative asset managers,” according to a press release.

Founded in 2013, companies use Databricks to pool and analyze vast swathes of data from disparate systems to glean insights — for instance, a retailer might want to combine datasets to figure out what products sell best, at what times of year, to forecast inventory requirements.

Moreover, data is pivotal to the burgeoning AI revolution, with Databricks serving as a unified platform for combining and standardizing data — structured and unstructured — which is vital for building and deploying machine learning models.

The company has now raised around $19 billion financing over its 12 year history, with its Series J round — first announced in December, when it had raised $8.6 billion of its $10 billion target — ushering in a slew of notable new and existing investors. Indeed, in addition to Temasek and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fun, QIA, Facebook’s parent company Meta also joined as “strategic investor.”

It’s worth noting that corporate investment into AI-aligned companies has become something of a trend, with Meta and Amazon joining a $1 billion investment into data-labelling startup Scale AI last year.

With its fresh cash injection, Databricks said that it plans to invest in new AI products, bolster its global “go to market” operations, and fund new acquisitions.

The $62 billion question now, however, is what is happening with regards to Databricks’ longstanding IPO plans?

Back in December, Databricks’ CEO Ali Ghodsi said it would be “dumb to IPO” last year, what with the election and new administration, as well as ongoing anxiety over the economy. He added that the “earliest theoretical possibility” for an IPO would be some time in 2025.

However, the company also said that it’s putting some of its fresh cash bounty toward providing liquidity to “current and former employees,” suggesting an IPO might happen later rather than sooner.

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