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US-based data analytics and AI firm Databricks has raised over $500 million in a Series I round, at a valuation of $43 billion.

The funding round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates and saw participation from current investors Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Franklin Templeton, and Tiger Global. Notable new investors included chipmaker NVIDIA, Capital One Ventures, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

The company had earlier outlined its plans to grow its 250-member workforce in India—one of Databricks’ key markets—by at least 50% this year.

Databricks, in partnership with NVIDIA, a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) computing, is building transformative AI technology.

“Enterprise data is a goldmine for generative AI,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

“Databricks is doing incredible work with NVIDIA technology to accelerate data processing and generative AI models,” he added.

In India, Databricks aims to add specialised roles such as technical specialists, sales and support engineers, and go-to-market resources to support its business growth. It also plans to establish an R&D hub in Bengaluru later this year.

The data analytics platform recently appointed Anil Bhasin as the country manager for India, signalling a concerted effort to drive the widespread adoption of its Lakehouse platform throughout the country.

Databricks’ Lakehouse unifies data, analytics, and AI on a single platform so that customers can govern, manage, and derive insights from enterprise data and build their own generative AI solutions faster.

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Anil Bhasin, Vice President and Country Manager at Databricks India. | Image credit: Databricks

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India’s data revolution could be an inspiration for other countries to see the benefits of digitisation, Bhasin had said during YourStory’s TechSparks event in Mumbai this year.

He said, “I believe we can make India the world’s first data AI-driven economy … Enterprises are either data-leaning (or data-forward), or they’re not. I can’t see how any organisation that isn’t data-leaning within the next 15 years will survive.”

In India, companies such as InMobi, Swiggy, Dream11, Air India, MakeMyTrip, Meesho, Narayana Health, Myntra, CRED, and Parle are recognising the potential of data and leveraging AI to optimise their business operations and fuel innovation using the Lakehouse platform.

“Data and AI have rapidly become the centrepiece of many business strategies. Databricks has not only pioneered the Lakehouse category with a world-class team and product, but it is now also at the forefront of generative AI for the enterprise,” said Alan Tu, Lead Private Equity Analyst, at T. Rowe Price Associates.

In July, Databricks completed the acquisition of MosaicML, a generative AI platform recognised for its MosaicML pretrained transformer large language model, in a deal valued at $1.3 billion.

The data analytics and AI firm said it crossed a revenue run rate of $1.5 billion, at over 50% year-on-year growth, in the second quarter ended July, serving a customer base of 10,000 worldwide. It also said it is experiencing a 90% year-on-year business growth across the Asia Pacific region.

In August 2021, Databricks secured $1.6 billion in funding, reaching a post-money valuation of $38 billion. The current valuation of $43 billion represents a growth of 13%.

Since its inception in 2013, the company has raised about $4 billion in funding.