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Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

databricks.com

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Re: Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

#31

Post by throwawaydbb »

nikolayasdf123 wrote: post #16

wonder what they employees think. will they ever IPO and cashout?

Since this year the employees are vesting RSUs (not options, and also no expiry date) quorterly now, they sell a portion of them (automatically) and pay taxes to the government at each vesting event, as the expiry date no longer exists. For liquidity there are tenders where employees sell their stock privately, so the employees no longer need IPO to cash out.

Just to clarify - for many years employees were getting the RSUs not options, just with the expiratation date attached - which is gone since this year.

Re: Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

#33

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

benrutter wrote: post #26
ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #6

I can’t help feeling it is the first major misstep from databricks , they are raising the money for their hosted Postgres and ai platform. Ai is not far away from dropping to the “trough of disillusionment” and I can’t see why databricks even needs Postgres. Hopefully I’m wrong as I’m a big fan of databricks.

Definitely seem like bad investments from my perspective on databricks. Databricks is great at offering a "distributed spark/kubernetes in a box" platform. But its AI integration is one of the least helpful I've experienced. It's very interuptive to a workflow, and very rarely offers genuinely useful help. Most users I've seen turn it off, something databricks must be aware of because they require admins permission f…

Yeah doesn’t seem like core functionality

Re: Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

#35

Post by bayindirh »

benrutter wrote: post #26
ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #6

I can’t help feeling it is the first major misstep from databricks , they are raising the money for their hosted Postgres and ai platform. Ai is not far away from dropping to the “trough of disillusionment” and I can’t see why databricks even needs Postgres. Hopefully I’m wrong as I’m a big fan of databricks.

Definitely seem like bad investments from my perspective on databricks. Databricks is great at offering a "distributed spark/kubernetes in a box" platform. But its AI integration is one of the least helpful I've experienced. It's very interuptive to a workflow, and very rarely offers genuinely useful help. Most users I've seen turn it off, something databricks must be aware of because they require admins permission f…

Everybody wants a pie in that AI bubble, whether it sticks or not, and that's a bad thing for companies' long term vision.

It might come down like the dotcom bubble like fallout when this thing bursts.

Re: Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

#37

Post by ktallett »

elAhmo wrote: post #27

Regardless of the product and idea they had, a company that is 15 years old and raised 10+ billion dollars still needing to raise money after all this time is ridiculous. Not being sustainable after all this time and billions of dollars is a sign company is just burning money, and a lot of it. wework vibes.

It feels like they may have got market share using low costs and this has led to this situation.

Re: Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

#38

Post by IshKebab »

tormeh wrote: post #28
flarg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Options can a significant portion of sign on bonus but they typically vest over several years so I guess they are hoping for an IPO eventually. IMHO Databricks will be overtaken by "events" including AI disillusionment, broader open source tools and broader education across the workforce. So the eventual IPO will not happen.

Depends. Some options only vest in the case of an "exit event", i.e. an acquisition or an IPO. At this point I would assume such options are borderline worthless.

Yeah I think this is how it usually works, and yeah at $100bn valuation they are now 100% worthless, because investors get paid first, and there's no way they'll get sold or IPO for more than $100bn.

Re: Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

#39

Post by VoidWhisperer »

elAhmo wrote: post #27

Regardless of the product and idea they had, a company that is 15 years old and raised 10+ billion dollars still needing to raise money after all this time is ridiculous. Not being sustainable after all this time and billions of dollars is a sign company is just burning money, and a lot of it. wework vibes.

They were expecting to be cash flow positive in Jan 2025, according to [0]. That said, it is hard to tell if they actually became cash flow positive since with them still being a private company, they aren't required to release that information.

[0]: https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/d...

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