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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

#151

Post by Temporary_31337 »

Lionga wrote: post #8
TrackerFF wrote: post #4

What’s the obvious rationale for going through the whole alphabet of funding rounds, instead of going public / IPO after «the usual» number of raising money. Wouldn’t the current strategy result in some serious stock dilution for the early investors?

IPO needs real numbers, VCs just want buzzwords

it's funny how we're letting private companies get away with made up numbers. Rather than making IPOs easier, owning a private company above a certain valuation should come with at least an obligation for GAAP accounting, indepndent audits etc. This is really for the greater good - so what is we see 2-5 years of a beautiful AI bubble if it's going to come crashing down again. It's lawmakers and regulators role to smooth out and dampen the natural tendency for the markets to go bubbly.

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

#152

Post by alanfranz »

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.

Afaik databricks is just selling shares on private markets rather than IPOing in order to retain more independence.

I can’t know if it’s completely true ofc, but that’s what employees are told.

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

#153

Post by datadrivenangel »

rich_sasha wrote: post #108
quietthrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anchoring IPO expectations and hype. 100B valuation is useful.

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

#155

Post by braza »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #44
TrackerFF wrote: post #4

What’s the obvious rationale for going through the whole alphabet of funding rounds, instead of going public / IPO after «the usual» number of raising money. Wouldn’t the current strategy result in some serious stock dilution for the early investors?

Investors put 10 billion in in a previous round; that's a lot. Somehow, more is needed now. 100M is just 1% of that. So it's not going to massively move the needle. But it does raise the question where all that cash is going. My guess is that they might be about to embark on a shopping spree and acquire some more VC backed companies. They've actually bought quite a few companies already in the past few years. And the…

At least in some sort, this new venture market dynamics in those private markets is looking more similar with the Art market. I remember that J used to follow several private auctions where most of the auctioneers had some sort of ring where in time to time someone needed some liquidity.

Even in some situations where some artworks could have way less value at the public auction houses (Christie’s, Phillips, Sotheby's) their preference was to market between in this circuit of private auctions.

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

#156

Post by kwillets »

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?

My company is doing the dbx thing, and the best I can tell my manager is that I'm neutral on it.

My working theory is that the UI, a low-grade web-based SQL editor and catalog browser, is more integrated that the hodgepodge of tools that we were using before, and people may gain something from that. I've seen similar with in-house tools that collect ad-hoc/reporting/ETL into one app, and one should never underestimate the value that people give to the UI.

But we give up price-performance; the only way it can work is if we shrink the workload. So it's a cleanup of stale pipelines combined with a migration. Chaos in other words.

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

#157

Post by ixtli »

ygouzerh wrote: post #107
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?

yes.

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

#158

Post by steveBK123 »

burnerzzzzz wrote: post #134

My company is heavily invested in Databricks and let me tell you it sucks. 5 min to spin up a job that needs to run for 10 seconds is a terrible way to spend ones time and money.

Yes, but you can pay to spin up unlimited numbers of jobs that spend 97% of their time spinning up! Truly cloud scale.

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

#159

Post by chris_va »

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #150
quickthrowman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not raising $100B, they are raising money at a valuation of $100B.

what is the investor thesis for coming in with such a multiple? You know they will have to find a a greater fool, possibly the public to buy at an even higher ratio to break any profit on that....

This isn't really venture investing at this point. The valuation risk calculation is very different for preferred shares than common stock, and with a healthy ARR they have very little risk (maybe not much profit, but it's not that different than a bond on some level...).

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

#160

Post by steveBK123 »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #136
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors put 10 billion in in a previous round; that's a lot. Somehow, more is needed now. 100M is just 1% of that. So it's not going to massively move the needle. But it does raise the question where all that cash is going. My guess is that they might be about to embark on a shopping spree and acquire some more VC backed companies. They've actually bought quite a few companies already in the past few years. And the…

The company itself seems healthy and generating revenue More interested in profit before I would call a company healthy.

Right I'm curious how long many of these deca/centa unicorn startups can make payroll & pay their cloud bills if all of this AI FOMO unlimited exit liquidity VC investment takes even a pause.
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