Data analytics platform provider Databricks today announced that it has raised more than $500 million in a Series I funding round, valuing the company at $43 billion. Notable new investors include Nvidia and Capital One Ventures, both of whom are known to be supporters of Databricks' competitor Snowflake, with Nvidia as a partner and Capital One as one of Snowflake's largest customers.

In addition, Databricks' plan to further invest in data and artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to further heat up the competition with Snowflake.

During its recent second quarter, Databricks reported it reached a $1.5 billion annual revenue run rate, marking a year-over-year growth of over 50%. It currently has more than 10,000 worldwide customers, including Comcast, Condé Nast, and over 50% of the Fortune 500, Databricks claims.

“We will continue to invest in genAI [generative AI] research, technology and talent. And potentially for M&A [mergers and acquisitions] investments in data and AI companies,” said Ali Ghodsi, Databricks cofounder and CEO, referring to the company's plans to spend the latest funding.

The funding round comes on the heels of Databricks' acquisition of MosaicML for $1.3 billion. The startup makes a genAI platform using machine learning (ML) that enables users to train and deploy custom AI models with their own data.

Now, Databricks is also teaming up with Nvidia to build transformative AI technology, Ghodsi said in a statement.

The company aims to unify data, analytics and AI on its lakehouse platform to help customers govern, manage and derive insights from enterprise data and build their own genAI solutions more quickly.

"Enterprise data is a goldmine for generative AI," Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and CEO, said in a statement. "Databricks is doing incredible work with Nvidia technology to accelerate data processing and generative AI models."

Snowflake, another major player in the data analytics space, also partners with Nvidia to accelerate computing and ML workloads.

Snowflake works with Nvidia to leverage the chip company’s GPUs, particularly for ML workloads. The two companies announced a partnership at Snowflake Summit 2023 to help enterprises build customized genAI applications using the enterprises’ own data, without sharing any of that proprietary data. The collaboration combines Snowflake Data Cloud’s data computing and security services with the large language model (LLM)–customization capabilities of Nvidia’s NeMo platform.

While Snowflake had its initial public offering (IPO) back in September 2020, Databricks has yet to announce a plan or timeline for its own IPO. In the second fiscal quarter of 2024, Snowflake reported product revenue of $640.2 million with 37% year-over-year growth. It also reported it has 402 customers with trailing 12-month product revenue greater than $1 million and 639 Forbes Global 2000 customers.

In earlier funding rounds, Databricks banked $1.6 billion in August 2021 for its Series H round, which brought the company's valuation to $38 billion. Prior to that, the firm garnered $1 billion in a Series G round, with investors including Microsoft and Salesforce Ventures.

This latest funding round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and included participation from existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Octahedron Capital and Tiger Global, along with new investors including Capital One Ventures, Nvidia and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.