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<p><strong>Data and AI platform Databricks has finalized a $5 billion financing round at a $190 billion valuation on Thursday, cementing its place among the most valuable private tech firms. The AI company’s CEO, Ali Ghodsi, has also argued that artificial general intelligence, going by an older definition, is already here.</strong></p>
<h3 id="databricks-valuation-and-underlying-revenue">Databricks valuation and underlying revenue</h3>
<p>Databricks first disclosed the deal on July 16 at a $188 billion valuation, after signing a term sheet led by existing backer Coatue. CEO Ali Ghodsi told Forbes that the higher actual closing number at $190 billion reflects a larger raise and extra shares issued during the funding process.</p>
<p>Coatue led once again on the final round, where it was joined by Blackstone, MGX and T. Rowe Price, with Sixth Street Growth coming in as a first-time investor.</p>
<p>Forbes places the company’s revenue run rate <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/victordey/2026/08/13/databricks-hits-190-billion-valuation-as-ceo-ali-ghodsi-claims-agi-already-arrived/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">above $7 billion</a> with year-over-year growth hitting a maximum of 80%. This trajectory points to a fast revenue expansion being behind a valuation that has basically tripled since late 2024.</p>
<h3 id="valuation-has-seen-a-steep-rise">Valuation has seen a steep rise</h3>
<p>Databricks was worth $62 billion in late 2024, moved past $100 billion by August 2025, and hit a valuation of $134 billion in December 2025. The latest funding round marks an almost 40% jump in about five months.</p>
<p>The company’s origins date back to Apache Spark, which was an open-source framework for processing large datasets built at UC Berkeley. Now the data company claims it serves more than 20,000 organizations, including 70% of the Fortune 500.</p>
<p>However, there is still a feeling among analysts that the price is still not settled. “ARR growing at 50%+ and gross margin stabilizing at 70%+ over the next few years should justify the valuation,” Owen Lau, an equity analyst at Clear Street, told Yahoo Finance.</p>
<p>He added a caveat, though, stating that “the ROI debate at the application layer is still not settled. If the enterprises can’t monetize these AI tools or increase productivity, they will likely cut back these data and AI investments.”</p>
<h3 id="databricks-plans-new-products-with-fresh-capital">Databricks plans new products with fresh capital</h3>
<p>CEO Ghodsi has earmarked the capital for three products he sees as the company’s major bets. These include Unity AI Gateway, Lakebase, and Genie.</p>
<p>Unity AI Gateway routes AI workloads across different models and lets companies set spending budgets. Lakebase, a serverless Postgres database aimed at software built by <a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/ai-agents-are-becoming-enterprise-insiders/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">AI agents</a>, has gotten past a $100 million revenue run rate, according to Forbes. The Genie product is designed to give AI the unorganized internal context including emails, meeting recordings and operational data needed to act within a business.</p>
<p>Ghodsi believes enterprises are moving from “tokenmaxxing to valuemaxxing.” Companies spent the early phase of AI consuming as many AI tokens as possible, he argues, and now want to maximize business results per dollar instead. He told Forbes that over one quadrillion tokens have been processed via the gateway, giving Databricks a direct read on how customers switch between models when a cheaper or stronger one appears.</p>
<h3 id="ghodsi-believes-agi-is-here">Ghodsi believes AGI is here</h3>
<p>Ghodsi’s AGI claim is dependent on a rather narrow definition. A system that can do the intellectual work humans do, and is smarter than most people most of the time, satisfies the criteria for AGI as discussed in the industry before 2022, according to Ghodsi.</p>
<p>What most people now call <a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/sentient-foundation-grant-research-for-agi/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">AGI</a>, he said, is closer to superintelligence, and “if that is your definition, then of course it is not here.” He also explains why so little inside most companies currently looks autonomous, claiming a model cannot reason fully about a business without access to its records, rules and permissions.</p>
<p>The Databricks CEO claims, “The world remains largely unchanged, except that token spending is rising.” That gap, conveniently, is also the market Databricks is selling into, which feeds into its steep increase in valuation for the past two years.</p>
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Databricks hits $190 billion valuation after $5 billion funding round

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