Data and AI unicorn Databricks is in talks to make a splash with another startup acquisition, Upstarts has learned.
Databricks is in advanced talks to acquire startup Neon, a maker of an open-source database engine, four sources tell Upstarts exclusively. Databricks is expected to pay in the ballpark of $1 billion for Neon, two of the sources say.
But despite some industry insiders describing the deal as if it’s done, the talks remain ongoing and could still fall through, several sources add. The total amount could also still exceed $1 billion w
17 Comments
datadrivenangel
Databricks is trying hard to get into serverless, but it seems like they refuse to allow it to actually be cheaper, which defeats the purpose of serverless.
newfocogi
They offer serverless Postgres. Here's a link if anyone else needs it https://neon.tech/
clpm4j
I've been seriously considering neon for a new application. This definitely gives me pause… maybe plain ol' Postgres is going to be the winner for me again.
jmull
Wow, $1B.
I've been bullish on neon for a while — the idea hits exactly the right spot, IMO, and their execution looks good in my limited experience.
But I mean that from a technical perspective. I never have any real idea about the business — do they have an edge that makes people want to start paying them money and keep paying them money? Heck if I know.
I guess that's going to be Databricks problem now (maybe).
outside1234
Ok, can we just. How is Databricks an AI unicorn exactly?
joshstrange
Well this isn't great news. I quite enjoy using Neon but I doubt it's going to continue to cater to people like me if it's bought by Databricks (from the little I know about them and from looking at their website).
Thankfully, I just need "Postgres", I wasn't depending on any other features so I can migrate easily if things start going south.
thiagoeh
Looks like the acquihire of Bit.io in 2023 wasn't enough to be able to deliver their own OLTP offering
https://blog.bit.io/whats-next-for-bit-io-joining-databricks…
https://www.databricks.com/blog/welcoming-bit-io-databricks-…
Or it's just a business decision to corner the market, as someone else said
markus_zhang
I'm confused. I saw users left Databricks left and right. Two companies I worked for previously got out of it due to cost.
Do they still have a lot of $$$?
yalogin
A tangential question here, will Databricks ever go public? At this point it's a large company making billion dollar acquisitions.
For someone looking to join the company, I cannot imagine IPO to be a motivation anymore.
forgetfulness
What is the lowdown on Databricks? Their bread and butter were hosted Spark and notebooks. As tasks done in Spark over a data lake began to be delegated wholesale to columnar store ELT, they tried to pivot to "lake houses", then I sort of lost track of them after I got out of Spark myself.
Did Delta Lake ever catch on? Where are they going now?
chachra
Hope they don't increase the price!!
999900000999
Supabase just raised 200 million.
What’s with all these Postgres hosting services being worth so much now?
Someone at AWS probably thought about this, easy to provision serverless Postgres, and they just didn’t build it.
I’m still looking for something that can generate types and spit it out in a solid sdk.
It’s amazing this isn’t a solved problem. A long long time ago, I was apart of a team trying to sort this out. I’m tempted to hit up my old CEO and ask him what he thinks.
The company is long gone…
If anything we tried to do way too much with a fraction of the funding.
In a hypothetical almost movie like situation I wouldn’t hesitate to rejoin my old colleagues.
The issue then, as is today is applications need backends. But building backends is boring, tedious and difficult.
Maybe a NoSql DB that “understands” the Postgres API?
taw1285
I am fairly new to all this data pipeline services (Databricks, Snowflakes etc).
Say right now I have an e-commerce site with 20K MAU. All metrics are going to Amplitude and we can use that to see DAU, retention, and purchase volume. At what point in my startup lifecycle do we need to enlist the services?
User23
Meanwhile here I am wondering why everyone isn’t using SQLite.
beoberha
Congrats to the Neon team – they make an awesome product. That’s about all the good I can say here. I don’t blame them for selling out. It’s always felt like a “when” not an “if”. I would be surprised if you can make money selling cloud databases – especially when funded by VCs.
anshumankmr
Great.As someone using Neon, how might this impact me? Price bumps?
crowcroft
If I'm guessing this either:
1. An acquihire (if your a Neon customer this would probably be a bad outcome for you).
2. A growth play. Neon will be positioned as an 'application layer' product offered cheap to bring SaaS startups into the ecosystem. As those growth startups grow and need more services sell them everything else.