Databricks to Acquire Neon and Boost AI Agent Capabilities
Databricks, a leading analytics and AI company, announced Wednesday, its agreement to acquire cloud-based database startup Neon in a deal valued at approximately $1 billion.
This acquisition aims to enhance Databricks’ analytics platform with Neon’s serverless open-source PostgresSQL (or “Postgres”) database offering, which provides developers, and now AI agents, with a fast, open and economical option to manage data. We at TechArena noted the purchase with interest, as it is the latest move by Databricks to expand its AI portfolio, following the acquisition of generative AI startup MosaicML in 2023.
Neon, founded in 2021, revolutionized the database industry with an innovative architecture that decouples storage from compute. This technology allows for rapid provisioning, branching, and forking of databases.
These abilities, originally intended to benefit developers, make the solution ideal for AI agents, which require speed and flexibility. In their announcement of the deal with Databricks, Neon revealed that recently more than 80% of databases on their platform were provisioned by AI agents rather than humans.
Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, emphasized the significance of this acquisition: “The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do. By bringing Neon into Databricks, we're giving developers a serverless Postgres that can keep up with agentic speed, pay-as-you-go economics, and the openness of the Postgres community.”
This move aligns with Databricks’ ongoing strategy to position itself as a top service for building, testing and deploying AI models and agents. It previously acquired MosaicML, an open-source startup specializing in generative AI, with the vision that the acquisition would enable “any company to build, own, and secure best-in-class AI models while maintaining control of their data.” The MosaicML Foundation Series, known for its MPT-7B and MPT-30B models, has enabled organizations to build and train state-of-the-art models using their own data in a cost-effective manner.
What’s the TechArena take? We’ve recently covered how agentic AI is disrupting how enterprises manage their workflows, data, and infrastructure (such as in this Fireside Chat with Intel’s Lynn Comp). Databricks’ acquisition demonstrates how crucial it is for companies to embrace architectures and data management strategies that will prepare them for the increasing demands caused by the accelerated adoption of AI workflows.
We’ll be watching with interest to see how Neon is integrated into Databricks’ offerings, with more information expected to come as part of the Data + AI Summit in June.
Databricks, a leading analytics and AI company, announced Wednesday, its agreement to acquire cloud-based database startup Neon in a deal valued at approximately $1 billion.
This acquisition aims to enhance Databricks’ analytics platform with Neon’s serverless open-source PostgresSQL (or “Postgres”) database offering, which provides developers, and now AI agents, with a fast, open and economical option to manage data. We at TechArena noted the purchase with interest, as it is the latest move by Databricks to expand its AI portfolio, following the acquisition of generative AI startup MosaicML in 2023.
Neon, founded in 2021, revolutionized the database industry with an innovative architecture that decouples storage from compute. This technology allows for rapid provisioning, branching, and forking of databases.
These abilities, originally intended to benefit developers, make the solution ideal for AI agents, which require speed and flexibility. In their announcement of the deal with Databricks, Neon revealed that recently more than 80% of databases on their platform were provisioned by AI agents rather than humans.
Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, emphasized the significance of this acquisition: “The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do. By bringing Neon into Databricks, we're giving developers a serverless Postgres that can keep up with agentic speed, pay-as-you-go economics, and the openness of the Postgres community.”
This move aligns with Databricks’ ongoing strategy to position itself as a top service for building, testing and deploying AI models and agents. It previously acquired MosaicML, an open-source startup specializing in generative AI, with the vision that the acquisition would enable “any company to build, own, and secure best-in-class AI models while maintaining control of their data.” The MosaicML Foundation Series, known for its MPT-7B and MPT-30B models, has enabled organizations to build and train state-of-the-art models using their own data in a cost-effective manner.
What’s the TechArena take? We’ve recently covered how agentic AI is disrupting how enterprises manage their workflows, data, and infrastructure (such as in this Fireside Chat with Intel’s Lynn Comp). Databricks’ acquisition demonstrates how crucial it is for companies to embrace architectures and data management strategies that will prepare them for the increasing demands caused by the accelerated adoption of AI workflows.
We’ll be watching with interest to see how Neon is integrated into Databricks’ offerings, with more information expected to come as part of the Data + AI Summit in June.
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