Databricks Inc., the closely held software maker widely viewed as a candidate to go public, is in discussions with T. Rowe Price about a new funding round that would value the company at $43 billion, two people familiar with the matter said.
The talks are preliminary and could fall apart, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. If the round is successful, Databricks’ valuation would be considerably higher than the $38 billion it reached two years ago in funding led by Counterpoint Global.
A spokesperson for Databricks, which provides tools for data, analytics and artificial intelligence, declined to comment. The Information reported earlier that the company was in fundraising discussions with investors.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Ali Ghodsi said the company was well capitalized and didn’t need to raise money, but might consider doing so for strategic reasons.
“There’s always talks with investors,” he said. “We’re getting inbound requests all the time.”
While many startups are seeing valuations fall and have been forced to take downrounds from investors, San Francisco-based Databricks is riding a wave of interest in AI.
Earlier this year, Databricks said it was introducing Dolly, a large language model that will help customers build their own ChatGPT-like generative AI applications. In June, the company said it had hit $1 billion in annual revenue. Also that month, Databricks announced it would acquire generative AI platform, MosaicML, for about $1.3 billion.
Until markets turned down at the start of the year, Databricks was a contender for an IPO, but Ghodsi said Thursday that the company didn’t have a date in mind.
“The markets are closed,” he said. “If they had not been closed, we would have already been public.”
--With assistance from Natalie Lung and Brody Ford.
