Databricks Raises $4 Billion
Databricks just raised $4 billion at a $134 billion valuation. Amazon is reportedly offering OpenAI $10 billion at a $500 billion valuation. Meanwhile, Google’s stock is up 62% this year while Amazon’s is up 1%. The AI race isn’t just about building smarter models anymore. It’s about who controls the infrastructure everything else runs on.
📰 The Rundown
💰 Databricks Raises $4 Billion at $134 Billion Valuation
➡️ The move: Databricks announced a $4 billion Series L round at a $134 billion valuation, up 34% from its $100 billion valuation just three months ago. The company crossed $4.8 billion in annual revenue run rate, growing 55% year over year. Over $1 billion now comes from AI products alone. Investors include Insight Partners, Fidelity, JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Blackstone.
⚡ Why it matters: Databricks is not building the flashy AI models everyone talks about. It’s building the infrastructure those models need to actually work inside companies. As enterprises shift from AI experiments to production systems, whoever owns the data layer wins. That’s why investors just valued a data company higher than most public tech giants.
🎯 Your takeaway: The AI gold rush has a new layer: data infrastructure. The companies making real money aren’t just using AI. They’re making AI usable for everyone else.
🤝 Amazon in Talks to Invest $10 Billion in OpenAI
➡️ The move: Amazon is reportedly in preliminary discussions to invest at least $10 billion in OpenAI at a valuation north of $500 billion. The deal would see OpenAI adopt Amazon’s Trainium chips. This follows OpenAI’s November agreement to buy $38 billion in cloud services from AWS over seven years. Amazon has already invested $8 billion in Anthropic.
⚡ Why it matters: Amazon is hedging its bets on every major AI player while trying to make its custom chips relevant. The circular nature of these deals raises eyebrows. Amazon invests in OpenAI. OpenAI buys cloud services from Amazon. The money flows in a loop, but the strategic positioning is real. Microsoft’s exclusive rights to OpenAI’s models expire in the 2030s, and Amazon wants to be first in line.
🎯 Your takeaway: The hyperscalers are not just competing on models. They’re competing on who controls the compute. Watch which chips power the next generation of AI applications.
📈 Google’s Stock Surges 62% While Amazon Flatlines
➡️ The move: Google’s stock is up 62% in 2025, dramatically outperforming every other Big Tech company. Microsoft, Apple, and Meta are all trailing the S&P 500’s 16% gains. Amazon is up just 1% for the year. Investors have decided Google’s Gemini models and integrated AI strategy make it the AI infrastructure winner.
⚡ Why it matters: A year ago, Google was the AI laggard. Gemini launched to criticism. Now investors think Google figured something out that others haven’t. The company’s vertically integrated approach, combining models, chips, and cloud, apparently convinced Wall Street that AI leadership isn’t just about having the best chatbot.
🎯 Your takeaway: Market perception can shift fast. The company everyone counted out is now the stock everyone wants. In AI, the race restarts every quarter.
🔧 Tool Spotlight: Databricks Agent Bricks
Databricks Agent Bricks lets enterprises build production-ready AI agents by describing what they want the agent to do and connecting their data. The platform handles the rest.
What makes it different: Agent Bricks auto-generates domain-specific synthetic data from your enterprise data, creates custom evaluation benchmarks, and optimizes agent quality and cost automatically. No manual tuning or endless prompt engineering required. The system learns from your feedback and improves without rebuilding from scratch.
Best for: Companies that want AI agents for specific business tasks like customer support, document analysis, feedback classification, or automated reporting but don’t have dedicated AI teams to build and tune them.
Pricing: Available as part of Databricks’ platform. Contact for enterprise pricing. Requires existing Databricks subscription.
👉 Try it: databricks.com/product/artificial-intelligence/agent-bricks
✨ The Wire
🔗 OpenAI launched FrontierScience, a new benchmark evaluating AI capabilities for expert-level scientific reasoning across physics, chemistry, and biology. OpenAI
🔗 Apple faces mounting pressure to deliver a “10 out of 10” Siri overhaul in 2026 after delaying its major AI upgrade. The company’s stock trails Google’s by 50 percentage points this year. CNBC
🔗 Trump’s AI executive order created a new AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state laws the administration deems inconsistent with its “minimally burdensome national policy framework.” OpenAI has lobbied for national standards to supersede state regulations. White House
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