Databricks Genie One becomes AI cowork home, free to Jan 31 2027

Databricks first introduced Genie One earlier this year to help users find insights and automate work. The update turns it into a single place to search, build and act, drawing on context from Genie Ontology and governed through Unity Gateway. That combination matters because assistants inside individual tools can speed up one step but leave the user stitching the rest together by hand.

The new Genie Search is central to that pitch. It indexes knowledge kept outside Databricks in documents, tickets and wikis across tools like Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, Workday and SharePoint. At the same time it supports over 100 MCP connectors, letting Genie retrieve live information and take action, such as checking a Jira ticket's status or creating one. Indexed content also feeds OntoRank, the method Genie Ontology uses to weigh which sources to trust, so search improves the context behind every answer.

Beyond search, Genie One now creates artifacts like slide decks, dashboards and interactive pages directly in the conversation, and can update connected tools such as Jira or Asana through MCP connections. Skills let users capture a workflow once, publish it to Unity Catalog and share it, with each skill running under the permissions of the person using it. The reach extends to native apps for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, Slack and Microsoft Teams apps, a Chrome extension, and MCP plugins that bring Genie into ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot Cowork and Grok Bot. Genie One and Genie Ontology respect Unity Catalog permissions and each connected source's access controls, and when a question needs data a user cannot access, Genie can prepare an access request for an admin to review. Admins can also trace how Genie responded to a request and set MCP policies through Unity Gateway. Genie One is free for users through January 31, 2027, with more detailed cost controls promised before then.