Databricks Raises $2B In Funding Ahead Of Expected IPO: Reports

The big data analytics superstar has a market valuation approaching $30 billion, a number that could grow by the company goes public – likely sometime this year.

Big data analytics software developer Databricks is raising more than $2 billion in a new round of funding that boosts the company’s market valuation in advance of an expected IPO this year, according to published reports.

The new funding would be on top of the $897 million the San Francisco-based company has already raised, including the $400 million Series F round of financing the company announced in October 2019 – putting the company’s market valuation at $6.2 billion – and the $250 million Series E funding in announced in February of that year.

The reports of additional funding come at the start of a year when many expect an initial public offering from Databricks that could echo last year’s blockbuster IPO from data cloud provider Snowflake. Snowflake went public on Sept. 16 with a market capitalization in excess of $70 billion.

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On Friday Newcomer.com, citing unnamed sources, said Databricks was “in talks to raise a private funding round” that would put the company’s valuation at $27 billion. The story said the exact amount being raised was unknown.

The San Francisco Business Times on Sunday posted a story, which cited people familiar with the deal, saying Databricks is raising $2 billion in funding in a round led by Franklin Templeton. That story, which also referenced the Newcomer.com report, said the new funding would give Databricks a market valuation of $29 billion.

The Business Times story said Databricks signed the term sheet for the deal on Jan. 19 but said the deal had not yet officially closed. The story also said it was not clear how much of the $2 billion in raised capital is new money for the company and how much represents sales by previous investors.

A spokesperson for Databricks, reached by CRN, declined to comment on the reports.

The Business Times also quoted a person close to the deal as saying the company could have a market valuation of $35 billion or even as much as $50 billion by the time of its IPO.

Databricks, founded in 2013 by the developers of the popular Spark big data processing engine, has been one of the hottest IT startups in recent years.

The company’s product portfolio includes the Databricks Unified Data Service and the Databricks Lakehouse Platform. The company also develops big data tools such as the Delta Engine query execution software, introduced in June, and SQL Analytics for running SQL queries against massive data lakes, which debuted in November.