Data analytics software maker Databricks has said that it’s acquiring Tabular, a startup that helps optimise data stored in the cloud. The gesture could help Databricks more quickly bring out products as it faces competition from Snowflake and other entities.
Databricks is paying over $1 billion to buy Tabular, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said. Snowflake was also bidding on Tabular, as was Confluent, international media reported.
Billions in venture capital have helped Databricks finance this and other recent deals, including the acquisitions of database replication startup Arcion and artificial intelligence efficiency startup MosaicML for $100 million and $1.3 billion, respectively. In September, Databricks said it had raised new funding at a $43 billion valuation, making it worth more than most startups and some publicly held enterprise software sellers.
The costs of running queries before exploring and making charts with data can add up. Developers built an open-source format called Apache Iceberg that stores data in tables that a variety of tools can then work with. Tabular co-founders Ryan Blue and Dan Weeks came up with Iceberg while at Netflix. Tabular adds business-friendly features to Iceberg and keeps the tables in the Amazon or Google clouds. From there, organisations can connect tables to Snowflake and other systems, enabling less expensive queries.
Tabular was established in 2021 and has raised over $30 million in funding, including from Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Zetta Venture Partners. Tabular has hundreds of customers, and it will work with Databricks to figure out what to do with the product, Ghodsi said.
