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Databricks launched Databricks Ventures in December 2021 as its strategic investment arm for funding innovative startups across the data, analytics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) landscape—companies that shared Databricks’ view on the importance of open platforms and ecosystems.

Since then, via the inaugural Lakehouse Fund, the company has invested in more than 25 amazing companies that are building on or extending the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. The result has been a stronger ecosystem, with Databricks’ portfolio companies delivering best-in-class product experiences for joint customers.

Today, Databricks Ventures is excited to announce the Databricks AI Fund, the second fund at Databricks’ strategic investment arm. Just as software ate the world, Databricks’ believes AI is now eating software. As such, the pace of change in the AI ecosystem has dramatically accelerated.

The era of AI in the enterprise has arrived, and this new AI Fund embodies Databricks Ventures’ commitment to supporting a new generation of founders and startups in this critically important ecosystem.

Databricks Ventures to Seek Out Early-Stage and Innovative Startups

To bolster the ecosystem around the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Databricks Ventures will be aggressively seeking out investments in innovative, early- to growth-stage startups that are utilising or enabling AI in innovative ways on top of or alongside our platform. These companies will share Databricks’ vision for an open ecosystem and its commitment to using the power of data intelligence for the benefit of joint customers.

Since last fall, Databricks Ventures has already invested in six AI-focused companies: Anomalo, Cleanlab, Glean, Mistral AI, Perplexity, and Unstructured. These portfolio companies fall in very different sectors of the landscape—from open-source large language model development (Mistral AI) to AI-powered data quality monitoring (Anomalo)—but all leverage the power of AI to deliver superior customer experiences.

With these varied investments, Databricks forged deeper partner and integration relationships across the AI value chain that benefit its portfolio companies and their common customers. It has also helped Databricks build a strong, differentiated ecosystem around its pioneering platform.

The company even more excited about the future of data and AI today than it was in 2021—and Databricks Ventures is ready to help a new set of founders and entrepreneurs build AI-first companies.

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