Ghodsi on Tabular Acquisition: It Got Very Competitive
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi shared candid details about the company’s acquisition of Tabular during a stage interview with CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit. He described the process as fiercely competitive and transformative for Databricks’ market strategy.
Deirdre Bosa delved into the rivalry between Databricks and Snowflake, asking if the competition still weighs on Ghodsi’s mind.
“There was a time they would [keep me up at night], but not anymore. Two years ago,” Ghodsi admitted with a laugh.
The conversation shifted to Tabular, a data management startup Databricks acquired in May 2023.
“How does Tabular fit into that?” Bosa asked. “Does that make you sleep better, the fact that you were able to acquire that company? Can you share anything about how that happened?”
“Yeah, it was a competitive situation,” Ghodsi responded.
When Bosa asked if the competition involved Snowflake, Ghodsi elaborated. “Multiple vendors were very interested. I mean, you’re good at guessing. We were all really interested in buying that company. Why? Because for the last decade, people have been locking their data into these data warehouses. We’ve been saying, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t give your data to them. Don’t give your data to us. Keep it in an open standard.’”
Ali Ghodsi continued, explaining the stakes:
“But then that standard became a huge fight—over which standard. The standard we proposed or the standard that Tabular proposed. By having both of those and being able to reach that whole market, it’s huge for us. It literally increased our market overnight. Suddenly, we can go to companies and sell to those that otherwise wouldn’t talk to us.”
“We definitely wanted to grab it. It was very exciting that we got it.”
Pressed further on how Databricks secured the deal, Ghodsi declined to share details. “No comment. It got very competitive,” he remarked.
Tabular, founded in 2021 by the creators of Apache Iceberg, specializes in open-source tools that allow companies to manage large-scale data in flexible, open formats. Databricks acquired the startup in May 2023, integrating it to bridge two major open standards—Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg—and significantly broaden the company’s market reach.
Ali Ghodsi, a Swedish-Iranian adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, co-founded Databricks in 2013 to commercialize Apache Spark. Under his leadership, Databricks has become a global leader in data analytics and AI.
Here you can see the whole discussion in a clip posted by Cerebral Valley AI Summit: