Databricks is raising a strategic funding round that values the data and AI company at $188 billion, it announced on Wednesday. The company has signed a term sheet, with the round expected to close later this summer.

The round is led by existing investor Coatue, alongside additional new and existing backers. Databricks said the fresh capital will accelerate its AI strategy, with investment focused on three products: Unity AI Gateway, a governance tool that helps enterprises control AI costs and access; Genie, its AI coworker designed to turn business data into answers and actions; and Lakebase, a serverless Postgres database built for AI agents. The company also expects the funding to support future AI acquisitions and deepen its research efforts.

Chief executive Ali Ghodsi said the investment reflects growing enterprise demand for flexibility across AI tools, as businesses look to get the best results for their spend rather than defaulting to the most powerful model for every task.

Databricks says more than 20,000 organisations use its platform, and that 70% of the Fortune 500 rely on its data and AI tools.

Data Sovereignty Wars: Why Southeast Asia’s AI Security Playbook Differs from the West
When data sovereignty laws mandate that Malaysian data cannot legally touch Indonesian servers even within the same company, conventional AI scaling dies. This is AI security beyond Western playbooks. Jane Teh operates where theory meets enforcement. With 22 years in cybersecurity including 10 years London-based consulting, she now advises enterprises across Southeast Asian financial services, manufacturing, and telcos where every AI summit centers on one topic: data sovereignty, data sovereignty, data sovereignty. Speakers: Jane Teh, Founder, VortiQ [x], and Stewart Tinson, AI-360 Project Director You’ll learn: • Why Chinese AI hardware at 3-5x lower cost than US equivalents changes infrastructure decisions • How adversarial training teaches AI to think like attackers using synthetic data • The three-lines-of-defense banking model adapted for AI governance and accountability • Human in the loop vs human on the loop - when each governance model applies • Local explanation techniques that satisfy auditors without exposing IP to attackers • Why Malaysia’s 2027 open financing regulations flip accountability to consumers Key topics: Sovereign AI architecture with multi-region gateways • Geopolitical model selection balancing cost vs client geography • Fraud detection AI when attackers subtly modify transactions to bypass thresholds • Model poisoning through manufacturing data pipeline injection • Explainability vs security trade-offs in HFT and insider threat detection • creating AI disconnected from current reality • IoT/SCADA integration exposing legacy OT systems The reality of implementing AI security where geopolitics meets data sovereignty meets AI-powered attackers moving faster than human response time.
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