Databricks on Thursday (July 17, 2026) announced a new funding round that values the company at $188 billion. The round was led by Coatue.
Round details:
- Exact amount not disclosed by Databricks; company said funds are not yet in hand and the round will close later this summer.
- Other outlets have reported the raise is roughly $3 billion.
- A VC told TechCrunch the deal is solid amid heavy investor demand; unusual to announce before money closes.
Prior fundraising trajectory:
- February 2026: 134 billion valuation.
- September 2025: 100 billion valuation.
- December 2024: 62 billion valuation.
AI repositioning: Founded 2013 as big-data/cloud analytics; now shipping AI products including Lakebase (database for AI agents), Unity (AI gateway), and Omnigent (meta-harness for multiple agents). Strong adopter of Chinese open-weight models for cost control; CEO Ali Ghodsi recently shared internal benchmarks for ~3,000 software engineers favoring open models (especially Z.ai GLM 5.2) and noting harness choice (e.g., open-source Pi) can matter as much as model choice for cost/quality.