Databricks accelerates APJ expansion following $250 million funding round

Databricks announced the opening of new offices in Sydney, Australia, Tokyo, Japan and Bangalore, India, as the next step in the company's strategy to help businesses in the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region overcome challenges slowing AI adoption.

The unified analytics pioneer, which established its APJ headquarters in Singapore in December last year, is valued at US$2.75 billion, following a recent US$250 million Series E funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Coatue Management, Microsoft, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and others.

The growing global demand for Databricks' Unified Analytics Platform led the company to exceed US$100 million in global annual recurring revenue last year, experiencing approximately 3x year-over-year growth in subscription revenue during the last quarter of 2018.

Since launching in Singapore 6 months ago, the company is already engaging customers in more than 12 markets across the APJ region, including Australia's government-owned health service, Healthdirect; Indonesian travel giant Traveloka, fast-growing India entertainment network, Viacom 18, popular Japanese online entertainment channel Every.TV, as well as South Korean multinational electronics company, Samsung Electronics.

Unified Analytics allows enterprises to join up the dots between data processing and machine learning in order to accelerate innovation and achieve AI success.

Developed by the original creators of Apache Spark, Databricks' Unified Analytics Platform makes it easier for enterprises to build data pipelines across various siloed data storage systems, allowing organisations to perform data science on massive data sets.

It also eliminates the challenges of data silos and the gap between data processing and machine learning platforms, while improving communication between data scientists and engineering teams.

"There's a healthy appetite for unified analytics in APJ from businesses keen to get ahead in the AI race," said Databricks APAC MD Jason Bissel.

"AI has far-reaching implications for businesses across a wide range of sectors, from healthcare to fintech and entertainment, and this has not gone unnoticed by businesses in the region. Our new Japan, Australia and India offices will be instrumental in meeting this demand, and this is just the beginning.