Thrive Capital Reportedly Weighing $1 Billion Databricks Stake

Thrive Capital is reportedly in discussions to invest $1 billion in analytics software maker Databricks.

This deal would value the company around $55 billion, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (Nov. 14), citing sources familiar with the matter.

Those sources say Thrive is expected to lead a share sale, allowing some early investors and employees to sell stakes to new investors.

PYMNTS has contacted both companies for comment but has not yet gotten a reply. Databricks was valued at $38 billion in a funding round in 2021 and $43 billion last year.

As Bloomberg notes, the deal, if it goes forward, would mark the latest in a series of big investments by Thrive into big Silicon Valley startups such as OpenAI.

Thrive raised $5 billion earlier this year for its largest ever venture capital funds, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

“The technological breakthroughs that will occur over the next years will be unlike anything we have ever experienced before,” Thrive founder Joshua Kushner wrote in a letter to investors.

PYMNTS spoke earlier this year with Databricks Global Head of Financial Services Junta Nakai about the company’s efforts to educate its clients, who include half of the Fortune 500.

“Especially in financial services, they want to use the most important asset that they have today more effectively, and that asset is data,” Nakai said. “And then to do so, you need to go up this maturity curve. The maturity curve breaks down to something simple, which is you must modernize your tech stack.

“You need to democratize access to data right throughout your company, and then you must transform your company,” he said.

“That’s what we do with our technology. And simply put, it stores all your data in a single place, and do all the things that you do with your data come from that.”

Founded in 2013, Databricks gives companies the ability to create their own generative AI models, which can be rolled out and monitored at scale.

A good example of how this works can be seen in Databricks’ work with Block, PYMNTS wrote. That company employs machine learning to detect and defend against fraud and enhances the user experience with personalized recommendations, which requires a strong grasp of customer needs and preferences.