TL;DR
Databricks is in talks to raise at $165-175bn, four months after closing at $134bn. CEO Ghodsi has privately signalled an IPO as soon as next year. Discussions are early-stage and the round has not closed.
Databricks is in talks to raise a new funding round at a valuation of between $165 billion and $175 billion, The Information reported on Monday. The round could begin as soon as next month and would represent a 23% to 31% increase from the $134 billion valuation the company achieved in February.
That February round was itself enormous: roughly $5 billion, including $2 billion in debt, making it one of the largest private raises in the AI sector. Databricks is now seeking to raise again before the money from the last round is spent, a pattern that has become standard among AI infrastructure companies racing to lock in valuations ahead of public listings.
The numbers
Databricks said in February that it had surpassed $5.4 billion in annualised revenue run rate, up 65% year on year. The company sells a data lakehouse platform that combines data warehousing and data lake capabilities, used by enterprises to store, process, and analyse the massive datasets that AI models require.
At $175 billion, the company would trade at roughly 32 times its run rate. That is expensive by traditional software standards but consistent with the multiples being paid for AI-adjacent infrastructure companies in private markets.
IPO positioning
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CEO Ali Ghodsi has privately indicated to investors that Databricks remains IPO-bound, potentially as soon as next year, according to The Information. A pre-IPO round at $165 billion to $175 billion would set the valuation floor for a public listing.
The timing places Databricks in a crowded queue. OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO this week. Anthropic filed last week. SpaceX lists on Thursday. Bending Spoons filed on Monday. If Databricks goes public in 2027, it would enter a market that has already absorbed the largest AI listings in history.
What the raise signals
Raising at a 30% markup four months after a $5 billion round is not a sign of capital need. It is a valuation exercise designed to establish the highest possible private-market benchmark before going public.
The risk is that private-market enthusiasm does not translate to public-market pricing. Discussions are at an early stage and the round has not closed, meaning the valuation range could change. Databricks has not commented on the report.