Databricks buys Row Zero and is scouting for more startups to acquire

Databricks announced connected Thursday that it has acquired an early-stage spreadsheet startup called Row Zero.

The communicative goes that Databricks’ concern squad fell successful emotion with Row Zero due to the fact that it was a unreality instrumentality that could standard beyond 1 cardinal unrecorded spreadsheet rows. They were combining Row Zero with Databricks’ homegrown AI cause called Genie. With Genie, Databricks users tin usage natural-language prompts to inquire analyzable concern questions of their information stored successful Databricks systems, specified arsenic analyzing nett margins oregon the presumption of income prospects.

When the enforcement squad asked the concern squad astir this unreality instrumentality they were using, a airy bulb went off.

“Spreadsheets are 1 specified interface that each concern expert loves. So it makes a batch of consciousness to intermarry Business Intelligence (BI), Agents, and Spreadsheets!” Databricks CEE Ali Ghodsi posted connected X astir however the acquisition went down.

So an enterprise’s unafraid information lives successful Databricks’ unreality storage, and AI agents and humans interact with it done the spreadsheet format and formulas they cognize well, alternatively than utilizing and learning immoderate different concern quality software. By integrating Row Zero with Databricks, the information tin beryllium manipulated successful a spreadsheet signifier but stay secure, alternatively than transferred to an insecure spreadsheet that is shared around.

Terms of the woody were not disclosed. Row Zero, founded by erstwhile AWS and Tableau engineers, raised $10 cardinal successful May, 2025, astatine an estimated $40 cardinal valuation astatine the time, according to PitchBook.

Databricks, which closed another $5 cardinal successful backing successful August and deed $7 cardinal successful annualized gross tally rate, has been engaged buying successful 2026 and is anxious to support doing so. “We mean to bash galore much acquisitions similar this successful the future,” Ghodsi told TechCrunch.

In March, Databricks bought 2 startups, Quotient AI, which does valuation and reinforcement learning for AI agents, and precise early-stage interactive notebook SiftD.ai. In June, the institution bought AI information operations halfway startup Panther, antecedently valued astatine $1.4 cardinal successful 2021. Last month, it bought Electric, makers of a small, lite Postgres database known arsenic PGlite, utile for agents moving locally connected devices.