Databricks discloses $800 million ARR

Data and AI company, Databricks exceeds $800 million thresholds in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2021 with its growth rate exceeding 80%. In August 2021, the company raised $1.6 billion in its Series H round, led by Morgan Stanley fund, Counterpoint Global, leading the unicorn to a $38 billion valuation.

With total private funding of $3.5 billion, the company’s key investors include Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, CapitalG (a growth equity firm under Alphabet, Inc.), BlackRock, Tiger Global and Salesforce Ventures. According to CEO and co-founder, Ali Ghodsi, in both the funding rounds of 2021, there was more demand to inject capital than there was room to accept it.

Founded in 2013, Databricks currently serves over 5,000 organizations (including Shell, HSBC, H&M Group and T-Mobile) by combining structured, unstructured and semi-structured data in a single place and enabling the execution of data science, massive-scale data engineering, and business analytics without moving the underlying data. Databricks terms this technology as a data ‘lakehouse’, i.e., a fusion of data lake and data warehouse.

According to Bloomberg, the company enjoys a net retention rate of 150% which is substantially greater than the industry average for pre-IPO software vendors. In the opinion of Ghodsi, the company is going up against well-capitalized competitors such as Snowflake, Amazon, Google and others who want to secure a piece of the new market category that Databricks sees emerging.

Presently, there is no confirmation on the timing of a possible IPO. TechCrunch states that the company is currently in an exclusive position in the start-up market with phenomenal investor interest allowing the CEO to bring onboard the shareholders he desires for his company’s post-IPO journey while enjoying limited dilution.