Latest news with #AliGhodsi
Cision Canada
22-05-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Databricks Announces 2025 Data + AI Summit Keynote Lineup and Data Intelligence Programming
The Data Intelligence for All themed event will feature keynotes from co-founders Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji and Reynold Xin Attendees will hear from Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase; Dario Amodei, Co-founder and CEO, Anthropic; and Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft SAN FRANCISCO, May 22, 2025 /CNW/ -- Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announced the full agenda and lineup of featured speakers for this year's Data + AI Summit, a global event for the data and AI community. From June 9-12, more than 20,000 data and AI practitioners, leaders, and visionaries from over 160 countries are expected to convene, both at San Francisco's Moscone Center, and tens of thousands more virtually, to discover the latest developments in generative AI, machine learning, analytics and data governance, alongside Databricks' latest product innovations. This year's Summit underscores Databricks' deep and ongoing commitment to San Francisco, building on the company's recent announcement to invest $1 billion into the city over the next three years. Tickets are still available; register here to join data leaders, open source enthusiasts as well as Databricks customers and partners. Data + AI Summit will feature keynotes from Databricks co-founders — and the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow, and Unity Catalog — Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia and Reynold Xin. Attendees will also hear from a broad lineup of data and AI luminaries, open source pioneers and global thought leaders, including: Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase Dario Amodei, Co-founder and CEO, Anthropic Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, in a pre-recorded, virtual fireside chat This year's theme, Data Intelligence for All, will showcase how every organization can harness the power of data to develop its own AI apps and agent systems. Attendees can expect to hear from top experts, researchers and open source contributors as they share actionable best practices and compelling insights about their data journeys. Highlights include thought-provoking sessions from data leaders from pioneering companies like Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Block, Doordash, Doctors Without Borders, GM, Joby, Mastercard, Meta, NVIDIA, SAP, Unilever, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Virgin Atlantic and Walmart. The annual event will feature a compelling program including technical training sessions, open source community meetups, networking opportunities and industry-specific breakout events, including the following highlights: 700+ breakout sessions highlighting data intelligence, generative AI, data sharing, data governance and industry trends. Speakers will cover the latest innovations in Databricks AI/BI, Databricks SQL, Delta Sharing, Lakeflow, Mosaic AI, Unity Catalog and more in keynotes, lightning talks and hands-on training. Attendees will also receive technical deep dives on leading open source projects and technologies like Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow and more. Sessions covering everything from data management and governance to building AI agent systems in practice. Hear from Databricks experts and industry leaders on how they're using data intelligence to drive real business transformation. Industry-specific content tracks that dive into the power of data intelligence within the Financial Services, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Public Sector, Retail and Consumer Goods, Manufacturing & Transportation, Energy & Utilities, Communications, Media and Advertising, Gaming and Tech industries. These forums and breakouts will highlight industry-specific data and AI use cases, customer panels, interactive demos and opportunities to connect with peers and partners in the Industry Lounge. Training and certifications with 30+ paid trainings, instructor-led courses and certification options. Courses will cover everything in the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, from advanced data engineering to Gen AI model deployment — all hosted by industry-leading technical experts. Networking events for attendees to interact and collaborate with other industry experts. A Welcome Reception will be held on Tuesday, June 10, at 6:00 pm PT, along with additional partner networking events, executive networking events and dozens of evening receptions. Additionally, Databricks' annual party, Data After Hours, will be held at 7 pm PT on Wednesday, June 11. Databricks' annual Women in Data + AI meetup to honor women's remarkable contributions and achievements in artificial intelligence, open source and software development. Learn more about data and AI as panelists share their career journeys, demonstrating how they blazed their own trail in the data and AI field. The new Marketing Forum gathers industry experts and innovators to explore how data and AI are transforming marketing. Discover real-world use cases, customer panels and best practices for data-driven marketing. All-day AI Agents Hackathon to kick off the first day of Summit, welcoming data scientists, engineers and analysts to join forces to create a novel proof of concept or unique technique on the development of innovative AI Agents using the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform! Data + AI Summit will also showcase nearly 200 sponsors and partners, including AWS, Accenture, Deloitte, Google Cloud and Microsoft. Check out the event's full agenda to learn more. Register here. About Databricks Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Block, Comcast, Condé Nast, Rivian, Shell and over 60% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to take control of their data and put it to work with AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow, and Unity Catalog. To learn more, follow Databricks on X, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Databricks to acquire database startup Neon
US-based data analytics platform Databricks has struck a deal to acquire Neon, a serverless Postgres database company. While the company did not disclose the deal value, a report by Reuters said the deal is valued around $1bn. Databricks will integrate Neon's serverless database solutions into its analytics platform, facilitating the development and deployment of AI agents. Neon, which was established in 2021, is developing the Postgres platform empowers developers to build reliable, scalable applications more efficiently—whether for personal projects, startups, or large enterprises. Databricks expects the acquisition to overcome the traditional database constraints where compute and storage scaling is interdependent, a limitation that often impedes AI workloads. Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said: 'The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do. 'Neon proves it: four out of every five databases on their platform are spun up by code, not humans. By bringing Neon into Databricks, we're giving developers a serverless Postgres that can keep up with agentic speed, pay-as-you-go economics and the openness of the Postgres community.' The integration of Neon's serverless Postgres architecture into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform is anticipated to streamline the development process for developers and enterprise teams, enabling them to build and deploy AI agent systems more efficiently. This collaboration is also expected to alleviate performance bottlenecks caused by numerous concurrent agents and also simplify infrastructure, cut costs, and accelerate innovation while maintaining Databricks' security, governance, and scalability, Databricks said. Upon the completion of the transaction, Neon's team will join Databricks. Neon CEO Nikita Shamgunov said: 'Four years ago, we set out to build the best Postgres for the cloud that was serverless, highly scalable, and open to everyone. With this acquisition, we plan to accelerate that mission with the support and resources of an AI giant. 'Databricks was founded by open source pioneers committed to making it easier for developers to work with data and AI at any scale. Together, we are starting a new chapter on an even more ambitious journey.' Earlier in 2025, Databricks raised $15.2bn through a combination of debt and equity funding. The funding round saw participation from existing investor QIA, the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar, as well as new investors such as Temasek and entities managed by Macquarie Capital. "Databricks to acquire database startup Neon" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Scoop
15-05-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Databricks Agrees To Acquire Neon To Deliver Serverless Postgres For Developers + AI Agents
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — May 15, 2025 — Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announced its intent to acquire Neon, a leading serverless Postgres company. As the USD$100-billion-plus database market braces for unprecedented disruption driven by AI, Databricks plans to continue innovating and investing in Neon's database and developer experience for existing and new Neon customers and partners. Neon: An Open, Serverless Foundation for Developers and AI Agents AI agents are becoming increasingly integral components for modern developers, and Neon is purpose-built to support their agentic workflows. Recent internal telemetry showed that over 80 percent of the databases provisioned on Neon were created automatically by AI agents rather than by humans, underscoring how explosively agentic workloads are growing. These workloads differ from human-driven patterns in three important ways: Speed + flexibility: Agents operate at machine speed and traditional database provisioning often becomes a bottleneck — Neon can spin up a fully isolated Postgres instance in 500 milliseconds or less and supports instant branching and forking of not only database schema but also data, so experiments never disturb production. Cost proportionality: Agents demand a cost structure that scales precisely with usage — Neon's full separation of compute and storage keeps the total cost of ownership for thousands of ephemeral databases proportional to the queries they actually run. Open source ecosystem: Agents expect to leverage the rich Postgres community — Neon is 100 percent Postgres-compatible and works out of the box with popular extensions. ' The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do,' said Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO at Databricks. 'Neon proves it: four out of every five databases on their platform are spun up by code, not humans. By bringing Neon into Databricks, we're giving developers a serverless Postgres that can keep up with agentic speed, pay-as-you-go economics and the openness of the Postgres community.' Databricks and Neon's Shared Vision Together, Databricks and Neon will work to remove the traditional limitations of databases that require compute and storage to scale in tandem — an inefficiency that hinders AI workloads. The integration of Neon's serverless Postgres architecture with the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform will help developers and enterprise teams efficiently build and deploy AI agent systems. This approach not only prevents performance bottlenecks from thousands of concurrent agents but also simplifies infrastructure, reduces costs and accelerates innovation — all with Databricks' security, governance and scalability at the core. 'Four years ago, we set out to build the best Postgres for the cloud that was serverless, highly scalable, and open to everyone. With this acquisition, we plan to accelerate that mission with the support and resources of an AI giant,' said Nikita Shamgunov, CEO of Neon. 'Databricks was founded by open source pioneers committed to making it easier for developers to work with data and AI at any scale. Together, we are starting a new chapter on an even more ambitious journey.' Neon's talented team is expected to join Databricks after the transaction closes, and the team brings deep expertise and continuity for Neon's vibrant community. Together, Neon and Databricks will empower organisations to eliminate data silos, simplify architecture and build AI agents that are more responsive, reliable and secure. We plan to share more at Data + AI Summit in San Francisco, taking place June 9–12. Details Regarding the Proposed Acquisition The proposed acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including any required regulatory clearances. About Neon Neon was founded in 2021 by a team of experienced database engineers and Postgres contributors with a singular goal: to build a serverless Postgres platform that helps developers build reliable and scalable applications faster, from personal projects to startups, all the way to enterprises. About Databricks Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 10,000 organisations worldwide — including Block, Comcast, Condé Nast, Rivian, Shell and over 60% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to take control of their data and put it to work with AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow.
Axios
15-05-2025
- Business
- Axios
Databricks CEO talks Neon deal and future M&A
Databricks is one of the world's most valuable unicorns, fetching a $62 billion mark late last year. It's also become a top unicorn hunter, acquiring three startups for at least $1 billion. Driving the news: The latest prize is database provisioning startup Neon, whose CEO Nikita Shamgunov has said that 80% of the databases created on Neon are created by AI agents instead of humans. Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi hopped on Zoom to discuss the Neon deal and his company's broader M&A strategy. What follows is part of our conversation, edited for length and clarity: Axios: What's the backstory to this deal? Ali: "I've known Nikita for 15 years. We were contemporaries starting companies at around the same time. He started MemSQL, which was renamed later to SingleStore, and I remember even back then thinking that they'd really figured out how to do things that scale and have solid engineers. So we stayed in touch. "I later met him at some AI event and he said he's just going to go for this new crazy idea, and I thought, 'He's not going to be able to pull this off, that's too complicated.' But here we are and he did it. "The thing that was difficult about it was he really wanted to take Postgres, which is this popular open-source project, and wanted to completely rearchitect it under the hood for the agentic AI era." There's a giant "vibe coding" boom, which drove the pending OpenAI-WindSurf deal. Did you feel pressure to do a related acquisition? "No. I mean we had invested in Neon, as did other strategics, and so the question was if you could really get ROI, which became a no-brainer when you see what people are doing with it. "It's related, that deal, in the sense that people are doing vibe coding which means they aren't really coding. AI is coding. And it turns out that the vast majority of AI's go and create Neon databases." What the deal competitive? "I think so, yes." Antitrust issues have caused a lot of Big Tech companies to cut back on M&A. Has that opened a lane for you? "I think that the founders of these companies also prefer working at companies like Databricks than at an enormous hyperscaler. If you're entrepreneurial and want to change the world, who don't go to one of the giants." You're worth $65 billion. Not exactly a lemonade stand. "We are still a startup. At these big companies, you'll get sucked into the whole corporate ladder climbing." Was the Neon deal cash, stock or a combination? "Largely stock, unfortunately. My board is pushing me, don't give up any more equity. You should just do cash deals, which is why we just raised this $15 billion round. "On the selling side, the founders and their boards and VCs just want equity." This is the third straight year you've done a billion-dollar acquisition, following MosaicML in 2023 and Tabular for $1.8 billion in 2024. Does that mean you're done for 2025? "I don't think we have any limitations like that. If there's an amazing team on the other side that we really gel with, and a product that's an amazing fit with what we're building. ... Of course the price can't be completely unreasonable, but if those three things match, I think we have room for much, much more."
Time of India
15-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Databricks continues M&A spree, will buy Neon for $1 billion in AI-agent push
Databricks said on Wednesday it would buy database startup Neon in its latest deal valued at about $1 billion, aiming to strengthen its analytics platform with technology that can help businesses develop and use artificial intelligence agents more easily. Demand for AI agents , programs that need little human intervention in executing routine tasks such as writing code or sending emails, has been growing as companies embrace the new technology to automate workflows and improve efficiency, creating demand for Neon's specific databases that are optimized for AI agents. Neon's cloud-based platform , based on the PostgreSQL open-source database - a system for organizing and managing information online - helps developers and AI agents store, access and manage data in real-time, making it easier to build and deploy AI-powered applications. Databricks, which is also an investor in Neon, sees the opportunity to own the newly built database as a way to attract more enterprises using its platform to build agents. The database market is due for a shakeup in the next few years, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told Reuters. "The disruption will be with AI. We would love to own a chunk of that." Founded in 2021, Neon has partnered with platforms such as Vercel, Replit, Cloudflare, GitHub and Microsoft to integrate its serverless PostgreSQL offering into widely used developer tools and platforms. It has raised nearly $130 million from investors including General Catalyst and Notable Capital, according to PitchBook. Databricks said Neon's team is expected to join the data analytics company after the transaction closes. San Francisco, California-based Databricks, which secured a $62 billion valuation after raising a whopping $10 billion last year, offers a platform designed to help users ingest, analyze and build AI applications using complex data from various sources. One of the most highly valued private companies in the world, it competes with Snowflake and is widely seen as a public listing candidate. Databricks used its valuable private shares to acquire generative AI startup MosaicML in a $1.3-billion deal in 2023 and last year said it would buy data-management startup Tabular for more than $1 billion. More than 10,000 organizations, including Comcast, Block, Rivian and Shell, rely on the company's Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to manage and analyze data for AI applications, according to the company's website.
