What happened
Databricks, a San Francisco data platform company, raised $5 billion in funding led by Coatue, with participation from Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price, and Sixth Street Growth, raising its valuation to $190 billion. This is the second $5 billion round for the company in eight months. The funding round was part of a week in which the largest deals also went to River AI ($1.1 billion for AI reinforcement learning), Form Energy ($750 million for grid battery storage), Neros Technologies ($250 million for defense drones), and CodeRabbit ($143 million for AI code review).
Why it matters
Databricks has surpassed a $7 billion revenue run rate with more than 80% year-over-year growth in Q2, signaling strong demand for data infrastructure as companies scale AI systems. The concentration of large funding in AI infrastructure, defense, and coding automation reflects investor confidence in these categories as critical to enterprise operations and national security.
What to watch
Databricks has raised around $25 billion in total funding over its 13-year history. Neros Technologies announced plans to build 1 million drones per year by 2028 and has contracts with the U.S. military and allied countries. CodeRabbit claims 150,000 open-source projects and 17,000 customers are using its AI code review technology.
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Databricks' second $5 billion raise in eight months marks a striking shift in how the market values data infrastructure companies. The company's valuation jumped from $134 billion in December 2025 (when it announced a $4.8 billion revenue run rate) to $190 billion today, reflecting not only revenue growth but investor expectations around how central data platforms will be to scaling AI systems. The round's roster of participants—including both traditional VCs (Coatue) and infrastructure-focused players (Blackstone, T. Rowe Price)—suggests confidence that data infrastructure is now a core business necessity rather than a specialist service.
The week's other mega-rounds reveal where venture capital sees the highest leverage. Defense technology (Neros, $250 million) and AI-native coding tools (CodeRabbit, $143 million) appear to be reaching inflection points: Neros is already securing military contracts and committing to production at scale (1 million drones annually by 2028), while CodeRabbit has already deployed into 150,000 open-source projects. Both are solving immediate, high-stakes problems—interception and code safety—where automation and intelligence directly impact outcomes. Form Energy's $750 million Series G for 100-hour grid batteries reflects parallel momentum in energy infrastructure, a category that scales with the electricity demands of AI compute.
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