Databricks plans its IPO next year

San Francisco-based Databricks is preparing its initial public offering, in the first half of 2021, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Discussions are at an early stage and the company has held talks with banks but has yet to hire underwriters, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. However, the company’s plans could still change.

The company is aiming to go public at a price significantly higher than the valuation in its last funding round. It was valued in 2019 at $6.2 billion when it raised $400 million.

Databricks has raised about $900 million from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, New Enterprise Associates, Tiger Global Management, BlackRock Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. Its backers also include Battery Ventures, Sinewave Ventures, In-Q-Tel and Data Collective.

Microsoft Corp. is both a Databrick's investor and a partner; integrating a version of the startup’s software into its cloud product, Microsoft Azure.

Databricks, was founded in 2013 by Ion Stoica, Reynold Xin, Ali Ghodsi, Patrick Wendell, Matei Zaharia, Andy Konwinski, and Scott Shenker. Databricks was founded by the original creators of Apache Spark. Databricks grew out of the AMPLab project at University of California, Berkeley that was involved in making Apache Spark, an open-source distributed computing framework built atop Scala. Databricks develops a web-based platform for working with Spark, that provides automated cluster management and IPython-style notebooks. In addition to building the Databricks platform, the company is co-organizing massive open online courses about Spark and runs the largest conference about Spark - Spark Summit. It has more than 5,000 customers including Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Conde Nast International Inc. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Source - Bloomberg