Databricks Ventures

Databricks Ventures was announced by Databricks on December 9, 2021, as a strategic investment vehicle for startups building on the Databricks platform and its open source projects. Its first fund, the Lakehouse Fund, was set up without a cap to back early and growth stage companies extending the lakehouse ecosystem. In May 2024 the unit added a second vehicle, the Databricks AI Fund, aimed at startups using or enabling AI on top of or alongside the Databricks platform, according to Global Corporate Venturing.

The unit invests in data infrastructure, analytics, AI models and tooling, data security, and the consulting firms that implement Databricks for enterprises. Its portfolio page lists more than 50 companies, among them Mistral AI, Perplexity, Glean, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hex, Hightouch, Anomalo, Unstructured, Twelve Labs, Lovable and Replit, alongside systems integrators such as Koantek and Lovelytics. Several holdings have since been acquired, including dbt (by Fivetran), Voyage AI (by MongoDB), Galileo (by Cisco), and Neon, Tecton and Arcion (by Databricks itself).

Databricks Ventures is explicit that it does not lead rounds or take board seats. It takes minority positions in rounds led by institutional venture firms, and in return offers what a financial investor cannot: access to Databricks' product roadmap, support for deep technical integrations, mentoring from Databricks staff, and exposure through Databricks go-to-market programs including the Data + AI Summit. The several portfolio companies that Databricks later acquired show the unit also serves as a window onto potential acquisitions. Portfolio companies also include several Databricks consulting partners, such as Celebal Technologies, Datapao and Indicium, which reflects the unit's interest in strengthening the services ecosystem around the platform.