Databricks, Inc.
Company History
Databricks History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2013 in San Francisco, California
When was Databricks founded?
Databricks was founded in 2013 in San Francisco, California by Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Reynold Xin, Patrick Wendell, Andy Konwinski, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica and Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, making it 13 years old.
- Founded
- 2013
- Founding place
- San Francisco, California
- Founders
- Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Reynold Xin, Patrick Wendell, Andy Konwinski, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica and Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji
- Headquarters today
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Milestones documented
- 12 (2009–2026)
- Current CEO
- Ali Ghodsi
- Acquisitions
- 7
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2009 | Apache Spark Invented at UC Berkeley AMPLab |
| 2013 | Databricks Founded by UC Berkeley Researchers |
| 2016 | Ali Ghodsi Becomes CEO |
| 2017 | Microsoft Partnership & Azure Databricks Launch |
| 2019 | Invention of Delta Lake & The Lakehouse Architecture |
| 2021 | $1.6B Series H Funding at $38B Valuation |
| 2022 | Debut of Photon Vectorized Engine & Databricks SQL |
| 2023 | Acquisition of MosaicML for $1.3 Billion |
| 2024 | Acquisition of Tabular for $1B+ & Unity Catalog Open-Source |
| 2024 | Series J at $62 Billion |
| 2025 | Neon Acquisition and $100B+ Valuation |
| 2026 | Passes $7B Run-Rate at $190B Valuation |
- Where was Databricks founded?
- Databricks was founded in San Francisco, California in 2013.
- Who founded Databricks?
- Databricks was founded by Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Reynold Xin, Patrick Wendell, Andy Konwinski, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica and Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji.
- When did Databricks start?
- Databricks was founded in 2013.
- How old is Databricks?
- Databricks is 13 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
In 2009, Matei Zaharia, a PhD student at UC Berkeley, created a software project called 'Spark' to help process large datasets faster than the existing technology (Hadoop). He released it for free (open-source). It became very popular among top tech companies. However, in 2013, Zaharia and his academic colleagues realized a large problem: large Fortune 500 banks and retailers loved Spark, but lacked the top engineering talent to actually set it up. They formed Databricks with a simple premise: 'We invented the engine, pay us to maintain the car'.
Founders
Ali Ghodsi
Ali Ghodsi is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Databricks, Inc. A effective distributed systems researcher and entrepreneur, Ghodsi co-created Apache Spark alongside Matei Zaharia at UC Berkeley, anticipating the large explosion of big data and distributed machine learning. Since becoming CEO in 2016, Ghodsi has taken Databricks from an open-source startup to a $7B+ revenue run-rate (August 2026) and a $190 billion valuation. He championed the lakehouse strategy, the first-party Azure Databricks partnership with Microsoft, and acquisitions including MosaicML ($1.3B, 2023), Tabular (2024), and Neon (2025). Ali Ghodsi was born in 1978. Education: University of California, Berkeley; Mid Sweden University.
Matei Zaharia
Matei Zaharia (born 1985) created the Apache Spark processing engine in 2009 to vastly improve the speed of machine learning workloads compared to Hadoop MapReduce. In 2013, he co-founded Databricks with his AMPLab colleagues to commercialize Spark as a managed cloud service. He serves as Chief Technologist, driving the company's expansion into AI and LLM infrastructure. Education: University of California, Berkeley; University of Waterloo; University of California, Berkeley. Zaharia was born in 1984 or 1985 and is Romanian-Canadian. He created Apache Spark and has developed open-source projects including Delta Lake and MLflow.
Reynold Xin
Reynold Xin co-founded Databricks in 2013. He has served as the company's Chief Architect, heavily influencing the technical design of the Databricks Lakehouse platform and leading the engineering organization scaling the underlying distributed computing infrastructure. Education: University of Toronto; University of California, Berkeley. Xin is chief architect of Databricks. On Apache Spark he was designer and lead developer of the GraphX, Project Tungsten and Structured Streaming components, and co-designed DataFrames. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Patrick Wendell
Patrick Wendell co-founded Databricks in 2013. He has held various vice president roles in engineering, directly managing the development teams responsible for the core Databricks runtime environment and its enterprise integrations. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Andy Konwinski
Andy Konwinski co-founded Databricks and previously helped create Apache Mesos. At Databricks, he has led product management and enterprise strategy, ensuring the open-source Spark engine was packaged into a highly profitable, enterprise-ready SaaS product. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Scott Shenker
Scott Shenker (born 1956) is a highly cited computer networking researcher. As a co-founder of Databricks and Nicira (acquired by VMware), his academic lab at Berkeley served as the incubator for the foundational distributed computing technologies that power the company. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Ion Stoica
Ion Stoica (born 1965) is a renowned computer scientist who previously co-founded Conviva. He served as the initial CEO of Databricks from 2013 until 2016, guiding the company through its early venture capital rounds before handing the role to Ali Ghodsi. He remains Executive Chairman. Education: Carnegie Mellon University; Politehnica University of Bucharest. Stoica was born in 1964 or 1965 and is Romanian-American. He is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and also co-founded Conviva and Anyscale.
Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji
Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji is a Databricks co-founder who focused on the commercial side of the business, including field engineering and customer-facing roles that helped large enterprises adopt the platform in its early years. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Apache Spark Invented at UC Berkeley AMPLab
Matei Zaharia and AMPLab researchers created Apache Spark to overcome MapReduce memory-latency limitations.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDatabricks Founded by UC Berkeley Researchers
Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Ion Stoica, and team incorporated Databricks in San Francisco with Series A from Andreessen Horowitz.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAli Ghodsi Becomes CEO
Ali Ghodsi succeeded Ion Stoica as CEO, shifting corporate focus toward enterprise cloud software and customer monetization.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMicrosoft Partnership & Azure Databricks Launch
Partnered with Microsoft to launch Azure Databricks as a first-party native cloud analytics service.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgInvention of Delta Lake & The Lakehouse Architecture
Open-sourced Delta Lake, adding ACID transactions to cloud object storage and formalizing the Lakehouse paradigm.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$1.6B Series H Funding at $38B Valuation
Raised $1.6 billion led by Morgan Stanley's Counterpoint Global, establishing a $38 billion enterprise valuation.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDebut of Photon Vectorized Engine & Databricks SQL
Released Photon C++ engine and Serverless SQL, directly competing against proprietary cloud data warehouses.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAcquisition of MosaicML for $1.3 Billion
Acquired MosaicML to establish generative AI training dominance, subsequently launching the DBRX open foundation model.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAcquisition of Tabular for $1B+ & Unity Catalog Open-Source
Acquired the creators of Apache Iceberg and open-sourced Unity Catalog under the Linux Foundation to unify data storage.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSeries J at $62 Billion
Databricks raised $10 billion in a Series J round in December 2024 at a $62 billion valuation.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgNeon Acquisition and $100B+ Valuation
Bought serverless Postgres startup Neon (reported at about $1 billion) to create Lakebase and raised capital at a valuation above $100 billion.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgPasses $7B Run-Rate at $190B Valuation
Reported a revenue run-rate above $7 billion (up more than 80%) and closed a $5 billion round at a $190 billion valuation; also agreed to buy Panther and acquired Electric and Row Zero.
Source: databricks.comMajor Acquisitions
MosaicML
2023Acquired to provide enterprises with cost-effective infrastructure and algorithms for building, fine-tuning, and deploying private foundation models.
Tabular
2024Acquired the company founded by the creators of Apache Iceberg to unify Delta Lake and Iceberg open table formats. The price was reported as over $1 billion.
Lilac AI
2024Acquired to enhance unstructured data exploration and curation for LLM training datasets. Terms were not disclosed.
Neon
2025Acquired the serverless Postgres startup (price reported at about $1 billion) to give AI agents and applications an operational database alongside the lakehouse.
Panther
2026Announced June 16, 2026 at Data + AI Summit: an agreement to acquire the AI security operations (SOC) platform to build out a 'security lakehouse' for threat detection on Databricks.
Electric
2026Acquired in August 2026 for its technology that runs and syncs WebAssembly-based Postgres databases inside application environments, keeping data close to AI agents.
Row Zero
2026Acquired September 24, 2026: a Seattle startup whose spreadsheet handles very large datasets, to add a governed spreadsheet interface to Genie.
Keep researching Databricks
Databricks Company History FAQ
What were the major corporate milestones of Databricks from 2013 to 2018?
Founded in 2013 by the creators of Apache Spark, Databricks raised $14M from a16z, launched its cloud platform on AWS in 2015, partnered with Microsoft to launch Azure Databricks in 2017, and launched MLflow in 2018.
When did Databricks invent and open-source Delta Lake?
In 2019, Databricks introduced and open-sourced Delta Lake, bringing ACID transactions, schema enforcement, and time-travel querying to cloud data lakes, giving birth to the modern Data Lakehouse model.
What occurred during Databricks' $1.0 billion Series G round in 2021?
In February 2021, Databricks raised a large $1.0 billion Series G funding round at a $28 billion valuation led by Franklin Templeton, joined by all three major cloud hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google Cloud.
When did Databricks launch serverless Databricks SQL and the Photon engine?
In 2021 to 2022, Databricks commercialized Databricks SQL and the C++ Photon engine, outperforming traditional cloud data warehouses in independent TPC-DS benchmarks and expanding into enterprise business intelligence.
What historic AI milestones did Databricks achieve in 2023 with MosaicML?
In 2023, Databricks acquired MosaicML for $1.3 billion, raised a $500M+ Series I round at a $43 billion valuation, and launched the Data Intelligence Platform to power custom enterprise generative AI.
What occurred during Databricks' landmark open-source announcements in 2024?
In 2024, Databricks open-sourced Unity Catalog, acquired Iceberg pioneer Tabular for $1.0B+, released the DBRX open-source foundation model, and raised a $10 billion Series J at a $62 billion valuation in December.
How many employees does Databricks have?
Databricks does not publish a precise headcount. Third-party workforce data from Revelio Labs put it at roughly 14,000 employees in March 2026, and the company says it has 30+ offices worldwide.
What happened at Databricks in 2025 and 2026?
Databricks bought Neon in 2025 to launch Lakebase, raised at valuations of $100B+ (2025), $134B (February 2026), and $190B (August 2026), passed a $7B revenue run-rate, and announced deals for Panther, Electric, and Row Zero in 2026.
How did Databricks start?
Databricks was founded in 2013 by seven academics and researchers out of the AMPLab at UC Berkeley. They were the original creators of Apache Spark, a massive open-source big data processing engine, and built Databricks to commercialize and host it in the cloud.
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