Databricks Expands Portfolio with Acquisition of Data Optimization Startup Tabular

Data analytics software firm Databricks has lately announced to have acquired Tabular startup that specializes in data optimization for cloud storage. The move is learned to boost its product offerings as well as strengthen its position in the data analytics market.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi reveals the acquisition deal is valued at more than $1 billion and it will help them to stay ahead of competitors like Snowflake and Confluent. It is a part of their investment series and earlier they acquired a couple of more companies including Arcion and MosaicML.

Startup Tabular was founded in 2021 by Ryan Blue and Dan Weeks. It offers innovative solutions for optimizing data storage and queries. It uses open-source format named Apache Iceberg. The technology allows data to be stored in tables and these can easily be accessed by various tools. Hence, data queries become more efficient and cost-effective as well. Businesses can now store their data in popular cloud services like Amazon and Google.

Databricks is witnessing good growth. It recently reported a 50% increase in revenue and reached to $1.6 billion for the year ending January 31. Similar growth has not been lately witnessed with the competitors including Salesforce, MongoDB and Okta. However, Snowflake seeks potential growth in computing workloads that use their data format.

Meanwhile, Databricks reveals to ensure compatibility between its own open-source initiative, Delta Lake, and Iceberg tables. It is believed that the Snowflake clients may also prefer Iceberg’s format and businesses may shift to Databricks. Tabular and Databricks may work on refining and expanding the product offerings. This will surely leverage the customer base of Tabular as well as the technology.