The (Databricks) platform is incredible. You’ve made it easy for people to manage their data, extract information, and process that data…data is still a very big part of training an AI model…so I think the way you start (training a model) is to come to Databricks and use the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.
- Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
Last month, the Fundrise team had the opportunity to attend one of the most hotly anticipated AI conferences of the year, the Databricks Data and AI Summit. The event brought together over 16,000 industry leaders and practitioners (i.e., the people actually doing the building) to talk about the latest advancements in data and AI and what that might mean for the future.
As both investors in Databricks the company and users of the product, we were excited to be there, in-person, not only to expand our own knowledge but also to bring our investors a first hand glimpse behind the scenes of some of the major AI breakthroughs that are occuring in real-time.
THE KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI’s underappreciated potential: The potential of AI may in actuality be more underhyped than overhyped.
- Data is the key: Data is and will be the backbone of AI.
- Databricks' leadership: Databricks is the leading data platform for anyone building or leveraging new AI models.
Databricks’ mission and the challenges of modern data management
Co-founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, kicked things off by outlining Databricks' mission of democratizing data and AI and showing how they've grown from being simply a data warehousing platform to now the leading data intelligence platform.
As Ghodsi puts it, Databricks sees three primary problems that come up time and again for their customers:
First, they all want to build with AI, but few understand how to.
Second, when it comes to data, everyone is concerned about governance, privacy, and security.
Third, most customers have large volumes of data but it exists in a fragmented state, and therefore is unusable.
Databricks' Solution: The Data Intelligence Platform
Databricks can now solve all three of these problems for their customers with a single solution, their Data Intelligence Platform which combines the Databricks Data Lakehouse with Databricks Mosaic AI.
This uniquely integrated offering allows companies to not only store all their data in one standardized format but also maintain proper governance and controls, while simultaneously being able to train new AI models on that same proprietary data. It’s a singular solution that makes each independent part more powerful when combined together.
While this may sound complicated, here are a few real-world applications that show just how powerful the platform can be in practice:
While still relatively new, the power of the Data Intelligence Platform is impressive. The company gave hypothetical examples of a future state where executives or senior managers could simply ask an AI agent to pull financial reporting for the company in real time vs. working through analysts. Or a small business owner could create an AI agent that would automatically review sales trends and generate a new marketing email that it could then send to the appropriate segment of prospective customers, all without the business owner themselves having to get involved. It’s not hard to imagine the significant impact that such cost and time saving functionality could have on companies both large and small.
Databricks’ impressive growth trajectory
And customers are clearly responding. During the conference, the company shared that they are growing at a remarkable 60% annualized rate with expected revenue of approximately $2.4 billion for the year, not only making it one of the most valuable private companies but, as we’ve stated, one of the most exciting companies in the world (public or private).
And we haven’t even discussed their ambitious product roadmap that includes more than 15 new launches just this year!
Though we were already bullish on the future of Databricks and the role it can play in the next evolution of AI, we left feeling even more optimistic about the company's potential and where they’re headed over the next several years.
Additional conference photos
