Short answers, pulled from the story.
Seven researchers from the University of California Berkeley founded Databricks in 2013. The founding team included Ali Ghodsi, Andy Konwinski, Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia, Patrick Wendell, and Reynold Xin.
Databricks created a data lakehouse architecture that combines elements of data warehouses with data lakes to manage structured and unstructured data efficiently. This approach includes Delta Lake which adds ACID transaction support directly to data lakes.
By October 2022, Databricks received FedRAMP authorization allowing its platform to be used with U.S. federal government contractors. This certification enabled analysts to run business intelligence reports using standard SQL or integrate with tools like Tableau and Looker.
In December 2025, Databricks completed a fourth billion-dollar Series L financing round at a $134 billion valuation. Earlier rounds included an August 2025 Series K round that raised another $1 billion exceeding $100 billion total value.
Microsoft Azure integrated Databricks as Azure Databricks starting in 2017 while Google Cloud partnered with the company in February 2021. By June 2025, Databricks announced new partnerships with Google Cloud services maintaining relationships with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon simultaneously.