Software maker Databricks Inc. raised $500m, lifting the company’s valuation to $43bn. The new funding will allow the software developer to focus on its artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Founded in 2013, Databricks currently has a headcount of around 4,000 and the latest funding establishes its price per share at $73.50.
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T. Rowe Price lead the funding round which included investments from Nvidia Corp and Capital One Financial Corp.
“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,” said Ali Ghodsi, co-Founder and CEO of Databricks.
“Databricks and NVIDIA are building transformative AI technology, and we’re excited about the business value and innovation we can bring to our customers.”
Databricks is developing its large language model (LLM), algorithms that can generate content using large datasets, to complement its tools for data and analytics.
The overwhelming success of OpenAI’s LLM ChatGPT has spawned a series of competitors, such as Google’s Bard and Baidu’s Ernie 3.0.
Databricks has upwards of 10,000 customers, the company said in a press release, including more than 300 expected to spend over $1 million annually.
In July, Databricks announced plans to acquire generative AI platform MosaicML in a $1.3bn deal which will see the two companies provide custom-built generative AI models for the enterprise market.
