Under the hood of the AI economy with Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi
Databricks just raised $7 billion in equity and debt at a $134 billion valuation. If your eyes sparkle, I don’t blame you. This ceases to be news that the company has numerous mega rounds and at some point another private company raises another pile of money.
But here’s why it matters. As Databricks moves closer to an IPO, it’s starting to act more like a publicly traded company. And the financial data he released tells us something more interesting than the size of the check.
80% of databases on the Databricks platform are now created by AI agents, not humans. And not all of them are tech companies. Databricks has more than 20,000 customers.
This is the clearest evidence yet of something we’ve been discussing since the beginning of 2026: AI agents aren’t just writing code, they’re also developing real software at the world’s largest companies. And this has significant implications for trade.
We spoke with Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks. It sits at the intersection of models, data, infrastructure, and essentially 20,000 companies trying to implement it all. He sees which AI models are winning, which businesses are using, and how quickly agents are evolving, and he’s at the forefront of the question the entire software industry is grappling with right now: What happens when AI creates it for you?
