Databricks co-founder Ali Ghodsi had a clear message for the companies writing the checks: enterprises are done with AI that merely talks. They want agents that work.
That conviction helped the San Francisco-based AI platform company close $5 billion in fresh funding at a valuation of $190 billion. MGX, the UAE-based technology investment firm, co-led the round alongside Coatue, Blackstone, T Rowe Price, and newcomer Sixth Street Growth.
The scale of the raise reflects where Databricks stands commercially. The company reported surpassing a $7 billion revenue run-rate in its second quarter, with year-over-year growth exceeding 80 per cent. At least 60 per cent of its client base consists of Fortune 500 companies, a figure that signals how deeply the platform has embedded itself inside major enterprises.
Ghodsi, who co-founded the company in 2013, framed the investor appetite as market confirmation. “The tremendous investor demand for this round shows that our AI strategy is winning the market and building what every business needs to maximise their impact with agent,” he said in a press release. He was direct about what enterprise clients are actually asking for. “Enterprises don’t just want AI that talks, they want agents working across their business that remember context, deliver accurate answers and execute work without blowing through their budgets,” he added.
MGX, for its part, cast the investment as a push toward more responsible deployment of AI at scale. “The investment will drive further innovation across Databricks’ AI platform, enabling more intelligent, trusted and governed use of enterprise data,” the firm posted on social media Thursday.
The Databricks commitment is the latest in a busy run of major bets by MGX on AI and data infrastructure. In July 2024, the firm backed a consortium with BlackRock that committed $5 billion toward expanding Aligned Data Centres, following that consortium’s acquisition of one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing data centre developers. Earlier that same month, MGX participated in a signing ceremony at a technology summit in Paris, formalizing plans to expand a UAE-backed AI campus in France.
What ties these moves together is a consistent thesis: that the physical and software infrastructure underpinning enterprise AI represents a durable, long-term opportunity. The Databricks round, with its breadth of institutional co-investors, reinforces that view.
The more open question now is whether autonomous agent technology, the capability Ghodsi is betting the company’s next chapter on, can deliver the operational results that Fortune 500 clients are being promised. The funding gives Databricks the runway to find out.