Databricks Just Became the Fastest-Growing Infrastructure Company of All Time.
TL;DR: Databricks hit a $3.7B revenue run-rate this quarter with 50% YoY growth, making them the fastest-growing infrastructure company in the public software universe. But the real story isn’t just the growth—it’s how they’re redefining the entire category.
AI Fueling Unprecedented Growth
Databricks just announced they’re targeting a $3.7 billion revenue run-rate by July, with year-over-year growth of 50%. To put that in perspective: they’ve become the fastest-growing infrastructure company in the entire Meritech public software dataset.
Let’s break down what makes this so remarkable:
- $3.7B ARR with 50% growth at that scale
- 500+ customers consuming at over $1 million annual revenue run-rate
- 80%+ subscription gross margins (infrastructure companies dream of margins like this)
- Free cash flow positive for the first time
- 140% Net Revenue Retention (top decile performance)
Growing Twice as Fast As Comps
When you’re doing $3.7B in ARR, 50% growth means adding $1.2B in net new revenue this year. That’s not just impressive—that’s adding an entire unicorn company’s worth of revenue in 12 months.
Compare this to the Meritech data: most infrastructure companies at this scale are growing 20-30%. Databricks is growing at 50%. That’s not incremental outperformance—that’s category-defining.
The Growth Gap is Accelerating While Snowflake reported 29% year-over-year growth in their latest quarter, Databricks is maintaining 50% growth at nearly the same scale. This 21 percentage point difference in growth rates means Databricks is adding roughly $800M more in net new revenue annually than Snowflake.
The AI Infrastructure Land Grab Is Real
What’s driving this unprecedented growth? Three things:
1. Perfect Timing on the AI Wave Every enterprise is scrambling to implement AI, and they all need the same thing: a place to store, process, and train on massive datasets. Databricks’ lakehouse architecture was built for exactly this moment.
2. Multi-Product Expansion That Actually Works
- Databricks SQL: $600 million revenue run rate, up more than 150% year-over-year
- Unity Catalog: 9K+ customers, representing >50% of ARR
- AI/ML Platform: approaching $300M ARR
50% of customers are using 6+ products, up from 40% last year. That’s not just expansion—that’s platform lock-in.
3. Enterprise Customers Going All-In Databricks has 3K+ customers over $100K ARR and ~600 customers over $1M ARR, with their top 50 customers driving over $15M in ARR each. When enterprises commit to data infrastructure, they commit big.
The Growth Race: Databricks vs. Snowflake
Here’s how the two data infrastructure giants stack up:
The trend is clear: Databricks is growing 50% faster than Snowflake while delivering superior unit economics. At current growth rates, Databricks will significantly outpace Snowflake within 12-18 months.
The Strategic Implications Are Massive
This isn’t just about one company growing fast. Databricks is proving three things that will reshape the entire infrastructure market:
The “Lakehouse” Architecture Wins Databricks bet early that the future wasn’t pure data warehouses (Snowflake) or pure data lakes (everyone else), but a hybrid that could handle both analytics and AI workloads. They were right.
AI Infrastructure Has Infinite Demand Unlike traditional infrastructure that has clear capacity limits, AI infrastructure demand appears to be genuinely unlimited. Every dataset becomes training data. Every business process becomes an AI opportunity.
Platform Effects Are Stronger Than Ever When customers use 6+ Databricks products, they’re not just buying software—they’re adopting an entire data architecture. The switching costs become astronomical.
What This Means for the Market
For Competitors: Snowflake, AWS, Microsoft, and Google are all scrambling to respond. But Databricks has a 2-3 year head start on the unified data+AI platform vision.
For Investors: We’re witnessing the birth of potentially the largest infrastructure company ever. Databricks raised $10 billion at a $62 billion valuation in December, and that’s starting to look conservative.
For Enterprises: The message is clear—data infrastructure is no longer a cost center. It’s the foundation for AI-driven competitive advantage.
The Bottom Line
Databricks isn’t just growing fast—they’re growing fast while building the infrastructure layer that every AI-forward company will need. They’re one of the fastest-growing software companies in the world as enterprise clients turn to their products to help generate insights from AI.
When you combine 50% growth at $3.7B scale with 140% NRR and genuine platform effects, you get something we rarely see: a company that’s simultaneously dominating today while positioning for an even bigger tomorrow.
The infrastructure wars aren’t over. They’re just getting started. And right now, Databricks is winning.
The Long Game: Revenue Growth Since 2019
Looking at the full trajectory shows just how remarkable Databricks’ acceleration has been:
Key Insights:
- The Crossover Point: Databricks was significantly behind through 2022, but their massive 271% growth in 2023 changed everything
- Momentum Shift: While Snowflake’s growth has steadily decelerated from 124% to 29%, Databricks has sustained 40%+ growth at scale
- The AI Inflection: 2023 marked the year AI infrastructure became critical, perfectly timed with Databricks’ lakehouse architecture
The trajectory is clear: Databricks will soon pass Snowflake’s ARR ($~4B). Growing even faster — 50% vs. 29%.
