Databricks
Databricks' valuation climb through 2026 has been steep: roughly $62B earlier in the year, to $134B in a December 2025 Series L, to approximately $190B on a new $5B round reported in mid-August 2026 — a more than 3x increase in under a year.
Revenue is still growing 50%+ year-over-year. The data lakehouse model (combining data warehousing and data lake capabilities) has become an enterprise standard. Competition with Snowflake is real and intensifying, but Databricks retains an open-source community moat via Apache Spark and Delta Lake.
CEO Ali Ghodsi has been explicit that a 2026 listing isn't happening — the company is deliberately staying private through this valuation run-up, which itself is a signal of confidence in continued private-market appetite.
YD Take: The tripling of valuation in under a year is the headline here — it means anyone holding secondary shares from earlier rounds has seen substantial paper gains, but it also raises the bar for what a public listing needs to justify. Excellent dividend initiation potential post-IPO given the subscription revenue model and enterprise stickiness, but that's a 2027+ story per Ghodsi's own guidance, not sooner.
- —Valuation nearly tripled in under a year — steep bar for IPO pricing
- —Snowflake and cloud providers competing aggressively
- —Extended illiquidity — IPO explicitly not happening in 2026
- —Enterprise sales cycles lengthening in macro uncertainty
- +Open-source Delta Lake and Apache Spark community moat
- +AI/ML workloads driving lakehouse adoption
- +International expansion via GIC and DST relationships
- +Continued private-market appetite despite steep valuation
Risk-adjusted return potential score
Moderate dividend potential, dependent on FCF conversion timeline