Databricks Reaches $188B Valuation Amid AI Transformation and ~$3B Raise

Executive Briefing

• Raises approximately $3 billion in a Coatue-led round, pushing valuation to $188 billion before funds clear this summer
• Triples valuation from $62 billion in December 2024 to $188 billion through four successive fundraising rounds in 19 months
• Pivots successfully from legacy big data SaaS to full AI enterprise provider, launching agent tools like Lakebase, Unity, and Omnigent
• Benchmarking reveals open-weight model Z.ai GLM 5.2 outperforms Anthropic and OpenAI models for coding tasks at lower total cost
• Finds agentic harness choice equally impacts AI costs as model selection, spotlighting open-source tool Pi as a top performer