Latest news with #NikitaShamgunov
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."
Entrepreneur
15-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Databricks to Acquire Neon in USD 1 Billion Deal to Power AI Agent Workflows with Serverless Postgres
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Data and AI company Databricks has announced its intent to acquire Neon, a cloud-based serverless Postgres platform, in a deal reportedly worth around USD 1 billion. The move is expected to strengthen Databricks' position in building infrastructure for AI-native applications and agent-based workloads. Neon, founded in 2021 by Nikita Shamgunov, Heikki Linnakangas and Stas Kelvich, offers a managed, open-source Postgres service optimised for cloud and AI use cases. The platform allows developers to clone databases, test changes in isolated environments, and restore data from any point in time. Neon's architecture also automatically scales compute, memory, and storage, providing a pay-as-you-go structure that aligns with the demands of ephemeral, AI-generated databases. Recent usage data shared by the companies shows that over 80 per cent of databases provisioned on Neon were created by AI agents, not humans. This reflects a significant shift in how applications are built and deployed in the AI era, where agents require fast, flexible infrastructure to operate at machine speed. Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO at Databricks, 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." Neon's architecture is expected to complement Databricks' existing Data Intelligence Platform by allowing developers to spin up isolated Postgres instances in under 500 milliseconds. It also supports branching and forking at both the schema and data level, allowing experimentation without impacting production environments. With this integration, Databricks aims to overcome traditional database limitations that tie compute and storage together — a constraint seen as incompatible with the elastic needs of AI agents. By decoupling these components, the companies believe they can offer lower latency, reduced cost, and simplified infrastructure management for organisations building AI systems at scale. "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." Once the acquisition is finalised — pending regulatory approvals and other standard closing conditions — Neon's team is expected to join Databricks, continuing work on their database platform and engaging with their developer community. The companies plan to share more information at the upcoming Data + AI Summit in San Francisco, scheduled for June 9–12. Neon has raised USD 129.5 million from investors including Microsoft's M12, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and Notable Capital. Databricks, meanwhile, has raised over usd 19 billion in funding to date, including a USD 15.3 billion round earlier this year that brought its valuation to USD 62 billion. Recent acquisitions by Databricks include Tabular and MosaicML, reflecting its aggressive expansion into the AI and data infrastructure market.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Databricks to buy open-source database startup Neon for $1B
Data analytics platform Databricks said on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, for about $1 billion. Databricks said acquiring Neon's tech would let it combine the startup's serverless relational database management system with its own data intelligence services to let its customers deploy AI agents more efficiently. Founded in 2021 by CEO Nikita Shamgunov and software engineers Heikki Linnakangas and Stas Kelvich, Neon offers a managed cloud-based database platform (with free and usage-based paid plans) that lets developers clone databases and preview changes before they go to production. The platform automatically scales processor, memory and storage according to usage, and supports branching — isolated database instances for testing and development — as well as point-in-time recovery. Those capabilities, Databricks says, are ideally suited to workloads run by AI agents, which operate faster than human developers but often require supervision to control for errors. Citing recent telemetry, the company said 80% of the databases "provisioned on Neon were created automatically by AI agents rather than by humans." 'The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do,' said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, in a statement. '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.' Neon has so far raised $129.5 million, according to Crunchbase, and its investors include Microsoft's venture arm M12, General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures, and Notable Capital. Databricks, for its part, has so far accumulated more than $19 billion in financing, and in January closed a $15.3 billion financing at a $62 billion valuation. Databricks hasn't held back from dipping into its warchest as it seeks to capitalize on the AI boom and position itself as a top service to build, test and deploy AI models and agents. The company last June acquired data management company Tabular, reportedly for nearly $2 billion, and in 2023 bought MosaicML, an open-source platform for training large language models and deploying AI tools, for $1.3 billion. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
