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

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

#101

Post by alecco »

throwpoaster wrote: post #76
alecco wrote: post #63

> and Lakebase, a new type of operational database (OLTP), built on open source Postgres, and optimized for AI Agents. Rust + Cloud Object Store/serverless/S3 + Postgres. Slap "AI agents" on top: keyword peak reached. So they will easily raise the 100bn. Meanwhile, this is Lakebase/Neon: https://blog.opensecret.cloud/why-we-migrated-from-neon-to-p... Due diligence? Taboo.

They’re not raising $100b. They’re raising _at_ $100b.

I stand corrected.

To be honest, I completely lost the sense of scale with money in general. It all feels like Zimbabwe dollars to me. The news talking billions and trillions. Meanwhile friends who used to be well-off (in US/UK/EU) struggle with mortgage payments and/or bills. And the ones not laid off are expected to grind 10hs per day to keep their jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/ng-interactive/2025/may...

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

#102

Post by jonasdegendt »

TuringNYC wrote: post #64
namenotrequired wrote: post #20

Why Databricks would do this (rather than IPO) is obvious. When you can raise privately, it’s way easier than IPO. The real question to me is why the investors (new and previous) are going along with it?

Because it is a better valuation than what they would get in the public markets with an IPO?

You'd think previous investors would want some actual liquidity though at some point. The early investors have had plenty of chances now but surely not everyone's been able to cash out. But hey, they have lots of funny money now I guess?

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

#103

Post by djrj477dhsnv »

benrutter wrote: post #29
retinaros wrote: post #19

I always struggled to understand how do you make a company adopt a platform like databricks to « manage data » isnt managing data a minefield with plenty of open source pieces of software that serve different purposes ? who is the typical databricks customer?

I think that's the main offering of databricks- you get a "data platforn in a box" and navigating the forest of piecemeal solutions is replaced with telling your data science and analytics teams to "use databricks". It's easy to look on knowing lots about data tools and say "this could be better done with open source tools for a fraction of the cost", but if you're not a big tech company, hiring a team to manage your…

What exactly is a "data platform"?

We have a large postgres server running on a dedicated server that handles millions of users, billions of record updates and inserts per day, and when I want to run an analysis I just open up psql. I wrote some dashboards and alerting in python that took a few hours to spin up. If we ever ran into load issues, we'd just set up some basic replication. It's all very simple and can easily scale further.

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

#106

Post by jasonhong »

quietthrow wrote: post #79
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.

This. To me if you are still unprofitable after 15 years you are not really a business. However genuinely curious about the thesis applied by the VC’s/Funds that invest in such a late stage round? Is it simply they are taking a chance that they won’t be the last person holding the potato? Like they will get out in series L or M rounds or the company may IPO by then. Either ways they will make a small return? Or is th…

The last person in usually gets the best deal, in that they can get preference and push everyone else (previous investors, founders, and employees) down. If things goes south, they get their money out before anyone else.

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

#107

Post by ygouzerh »

jakozaur wrote: post #93

It doesn't look like a typical round for raising capital for investments. Instead: 1. Liquidity: Early investors could sell to late-stage investors, since they are not IPO. Their previous round looked like that. 2. Markup: The previous investors can increase their valuation by doing a round again. It also provides a paper valuation for acquiring new companies. That combined with preferred stock (always get 1x back) m…

So if I understand well, investors are not really investing for the company results, but more on the hope that people will continue to invest in the company?

In a kind of a ... ponzi pyramid?

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

#108

Post by rich_sasha »

quietthrow wrote: post #79
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.

This. To me if you are still unprofitable after 15 years you are not really a business. However genuinely curious about the thesis applied by the VC’s/Funds that invest in such a late stage round? Is it simply they are taking a chance that they won’t be the last person holding the potato? Like they will get out in series L or M rounds or the company may IPO by then. Either ways they will make a small return? Or is th…

I guess making a quick buck pre-IPO? It's essentially lending cash on loose terms.

Why they do it via an equity offering and not debt is unclear. You'd imagine the latter is cheaper for a hectocorn.

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

#110

Post by betaby »

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.

Same story was with Spunk. Yet it was acquired by Cisco for $28 billion. Valuation and ability to burn cash for 10+ years of the Silicon Valley companies never cease to amaze me.
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