Databricks to buy the start of the open source neon database for $ 1 billion

Data Analytics Platform Databricks said on Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire Neon, a startup to build an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, for around $ 1 billion.

Databricks said that the acquisition of NEON technology would allow it to combine the STARUP -free relational database management system with its own data intelligence services to allow its customers to deploy AI agents more effectively.

Founded in 2021 by the CEO Nikita Shamgunov and the software engineers Heikki Linnakangas and Stas Kelvich, NEON offers a data-based database platform (with free paid and use on use) that allows developers to clon databases and preview modifications before production. The platform automatically evolves the processor, memory and storage according to use and support the branching – of the database instances isolated for tests and development – as well as punctual recovery.

These capacities, according to Databricks, is perfectly suitable for workloads managed by AI agents, who work faster than human developers but often require supervision to control errors. Citing recent telemetry, the company said that 80% of the “provisionable neon databases were automatically created by AI agents rather than humans”.

“The era of AI-NATIVE applications and focused on agents re-enhance what a database should do,” said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, in a press release. “Neon proves it: four databases out of five on their platform are filmed by the code, not humans. By providing a neon in the databricks, we give developers a server -free postgres that can follow aging speed, the paid economy and the step and the opening of the postgres community. ”

Neon has so far raised $ 129.6 million, according to Crunchbase, and its investors include Microsoft Venture Arm M12, General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures and notable capital. Databricks, for its part, has so far accumulated more than $ 19 billion in funding and, in January, closed funding of $ 15.3 billion to an assessment of $ 62 billion.

Databricks did not stop diving into his war trunk while he seeks to capitalize on the Boom of AI and position himself as a higher service to build, test and deploy models and agents of AI. The company last June acquired the Tabular data management company, would have nearly $ 2 billion, and in 2023, it bought Mosaicml, an open source platform for the formation of important language models and the deployment of AI tools, for $ 1.3 billion.