Possessing ample financial reserves from its recent $5 billion funding round, which concluded last month (alongside billions in revenue), Databricks is actively engaging in acquisitions.
The enterprise, primarily recognized for its cloud data analytics platform, revealed on Tuesday the introduction of a novel security offering named Lakewatch. Lakewatch leverages Databricks’ capacity to house vast quantities of data to execute conventional Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) functions, such as identifying and scrutinizing hazards. Crucially, this is accomplished with assistance from AI agents driven by Anthropic’s Claude.
Databricks acquired two nascent firms to support this novel product: Antimatter, through a previously unrevealed transaction finalized last year, and SiftD.ai, via an agreement rapidly concluded over the past fortnight and finalized on Monday, as disclosed by the firm to TechCrunch.
Financial details remained unrevealed for either acquisition. Antimatter, established by cybersecurity expert Andrew Krioukov, secured $12 million with leadership from New Enterprise Associates in 2022, based on Pitchbook’s projections. Should the diminutive SiftD.ai have attracted funding, Pitchbook possessed no knowledge of it.
SiftD.ai was quite nascent, having merely introduced its offering in November: a collaborative digital notebook (akin to a Jupyter notebook) designed for joint efforts between individuals and agents. The Databricks team were acquainted with the co-founder and CEO of the fledgling company, Steve Zhang, from his extensive tenure as principal scientist at Splunk (until 2021). He devised the Search Processing Language during his time there. (His professional profile on LinkedIn also indicates he served as CTO of Astronomer, involved in the Coldplay CEO controversy, departing in 2023 prior to establishing SiftD.)
These two acquisitions involved diminutive emerging companies — just a handful of individuals in SiftD’s instance and fewer than five dozen for Antimatter, as per LinkedIn. SiftD seems to be an acquisition primarily for talent. With Antimatter, Databricks likely secured some intellectual property as well. Krioukov had showcased Antimatter’s technology publicly in 2024 at RSA’s Innovation Sandbox Contest. Antimatter had been developing a “data control plane” utility empowering businesses to deploy agents securely, concurrently safeguarding confidential information.
While Databricks refused to specify the number of personnel obtained, it verified that the staff from the nascent firms became part of the corporation. Krioukov, who has been employed by Databricks for several months, heads the Lakewatch unit.
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We inquired with Databricks if it intended to continue seeking out emerging companies for acquisition, and a representative broadly confirmed their ongoing vigilance. “We’re consistently anticipating future developments — our objective involves maintaining market leadership and addressing deficiencies in what our clients require,” the spokesperson remarked.
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