Databricks raises $5B at a $190B valuation, up 42% in six months
Databricks closed a $5 billion funding round on Thursday at a $190 billion valuation, its second raise this year and a roughly 42% jump from the $134 billion it was worth six months ago.
Coatue Management led the round. Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price Investment Management and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates joined, alongside new investors including Sixth Street Growth, BOND, Clearlake Capital, Point72, Premji Invest and TPG.
The company said it has passed a $7 billion annualised revenue run-rate, with second-quarter revenue growing more than 80% year over year. That growth rate is the number underwriting the valuation. At $190 billion, investors are paying roughly 27 times run-rate revenue.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Raised | $5 billion |
| Valuation | $190 billion |
| Valuation six months ago | ~$134 billion |
| Annualised revenue run-rate | $7 billion+ |
| Q2 revenue growth | 80%+ year over year |
| Implied multiple | ~27× run-rate |
What the Databricks valuation rests on
The company crossed a $7 billion revenue run rate and grew more than 80% year on year in its second quarter, SiliconANGLE reported. Growth at that rate is what a 27x forward multiple is buying.
Ghodsi told TechCrunch the company wanted $1 billion and investors offered $15 billion, which says more about the funding environment than about Databricks.
Our piece on what a valuation actually means covers what those headline numbers leave out.
Proceeds are earmarked for products that help businesses build and run AI agents, according to CNBC. That’s the same demand story nearly every enterprise AI vendor is telling right now, and it’s the one investors are underwriting.
Databricks competes directly with Snowflake and with Alphabet’s data platform business. CNBC reported the round as the second financing this year for the company.
Chief executive Ali Ghodsi used the announcement to make a considerably larger claim. That artificial general intelligence has already arrived, per Forbes. Treat that as positioning rather than a technical assessment; it arrived attached to a fundraise.
The thing worth watching isn’t the headline number. It’s the gap between a 42% valuation increase in six months and the underlying 80% revenue growth. Those can both be true and still leave the multiple expanding faster than the business, which is the pattern that matters if private AI valuations turn.
Why a private Databricks valuation is hard to read
Databricks has stayed private through the entire AI cycle. At $190 billion it’s now larger than most of the enterprise software companies it competes with on the public markets, without the disclosure that comes with being one. Reuters noted investor appetite for AI-linked companies remains strong.
That matters for anyone trying to read the sector. Private rounds set headline valuations without quarterly filings behind them, so a run-rate figure disclosed in a funding announcement is the company’s own number, on the company’s own timing.
Six investors in this round are new to the cap table. Fresh money at a higher mark is a genuinely different signal from existing backers marking up their own position, and it’s the detail that separates a real repricing from an internal one.
We’ve written about what’s actually driving compute spending, which is the cost side of the demand these numbers describe.
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