Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks.
data block
Databricks, a data analytics software startup, said on Wednesday Yuan Signed up as an investor.
As the company that trains the popular Llama open-source large language model (LLM) (the basis of Databricks), Meta plays an important role in the field of artificial intelligence. Databricks works closely with Meta’s Llama team, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said in an interview this week.
This relationship extends all the way to Meta Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“We’ve discussed open source software in the past, and he’s very concerned about the open source model and Llama,” Ghodsi said.
Meta invests in far fewer startups than its tech peers letter and Microsoft. But Databricks has been a fast-growing company heading toward a massive IPO. Meta invested $10 billion in financing Databricks is one of the largest investments in venture capital history. Databricks has raised $14 billion in venture capital to date.
The new funds will be used for global expansion and liquidity for current and former employees.
On Wednesday, Databricks also announced a $5.25 billion credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase. Godsey said that even with high interest rates, credit may be a better option than spending on shares and diluting existing shareholders.
Money from the bank did enable Databricks to train its own open source LL.M. (called DBRX) last year at a cost of about $10 million. Database reception perform better In some tests at the time, it was better than Meta’s Llama and other alternatives, but other models quickly surpassed it.
This is one of the logical reasons why Databricks has aligned itself with the most famous open model builder. Ghodsi said Meta has significant funds available for capital expenditures to train models, while Databricks can use its funds elsewhere.
He did not specify whether Meta was a customer.
San Francisco-based Databricks currently has 8,000 employees. “I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if we went public” in a year, Godsey said.
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, participated in the $10 billion financing round along with Meta. Ghodsi said Databricks is willing to allow its software to run on the data centers of major operators in the Middle East. Today, it can only be seen through AmazonGoogle and Microsoft cloud.
