The biggest winners from AI are supposed to be the chipmakers. Databricks says the boring data plumbing matters just as much.
The private software firm makes a tool that competes with Snowflake. That business just more than doubled in a year.
It now runs at a $1.5 billion yearly pace. That is a big leap in Snowflake's home market.
The growth shows where AI money is really going. It is not just chips, but the systems that store and feed the data.
That figure is a run rate. It takes the current sales pace and stretches it over a full year.
It is a quick way to size a business that is growing fast. The product behind it is called Databricks SQL.
In plain terms, it is a data warehouse. That is one big place where firms store and crunch all their data.
It is the same job Snowflake is known for. So this is a punch at Snowflake's core business.
The firm takes on Google in this market, too. Bloomberg first reported the new run rate.
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CEO Ali Ghodsi gave two reasons. The first is AI work that is booming and needs somewhere to live.
The second is customers moving over from rivals. The logic is simple.
Firms that feed data into AI models want it all under one roof. Splitting it across two sellers is a hassle.
So the firm is offering that one roof. The pitch is landing at the right time.
Almost every big company is racing to put its data to work for AI. The one that holds the data often wins the next sale, too.
Once a company's data lives in one place, moving it is painful. That lock-in is why each win matters so much.
That switch is the real tell. When buyers leave a rival, they rarely come back.
This is faster than planned. The same business ran at about $600 million at the end of 2024.
The goal was roughly $1 billion by early this year. It has already blown past that.
For a private firm, that pace builds the case for a big listing.
For investors, the bigger story is the IPO, since Databricks is still private. Numbers like these are what it will lean on when it decides to go public.
Its main rival is already there. Snowflake trades on the public market under the ticker SNOW, so traders can watch it for clues.
Two things stand out from here. One is when the firm files to go public.
The other is whether Snowflake feels the heat in its own results. The fight over AI's data plumbing is heating up.
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