Built By Berkeley

Welcome to Built By Berkeley, where we announce all the funding rounds by Berkeley-founded companies. This is a community effort, so please let us know if we missed a company here. 🐻

Biggest Ever Berkeley Funding Round: Databricks, founded at Berkeley, has raised a landmark and whopping $10B funding round at a $62B valuation. That is a monster amount of capital and the most ever raised in one round for a Berkeley-founded startup (I think…open to being corrected!).*

*I checked on Perplexity, who also ended up raising $500M at a $9B valuation this week. They started the year at a $1B valuation - so well done the team there.

What does Databricks do?

In the simplest terms, Databricks helps enterprises manage and process unstructured and structured data at scale in the cloud.

Why do investors have the hots for Databricks?

• 60% YoY growth

• $3B+ revenue run-rate

• 500+ customers at $1M+ ARR.

• Their SQL product alone has hit $600M run-rate, growing 150% YoY.

The 60% YoY growth rate at a $3B scale is remarkable; this is a high-growth company operating at a massive scale. Databricks has also done an excellent job positioning itself as the go-to company for helping businesses build and operate AI. For investors, this represents a double slam dunk: rapid revenue growth combined with AI tailwinds. Initially, they aimed to raise $3–4B but attracted interest totaling $19B! ultimately deciding to settle for $10B.

At $10B, this is bigger than most IPOs, so why not just IPO?

The Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi (Berkeley scholar and Professor) said, ‘It’s dumb to IPO this year’ - why?

• Election year

• Interest Rates

• Inflation

If you can raise $10B - do you even need the public markets?

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 8 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $10.7B of capital raised from the 16th December to 22nd December

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Closed Rounds

📊 Databricks. $10B Series J 🇺🇸 Unified data and AI platform. 💰 Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford.

🐻 Ali Ghodsi, CEO & Co-Founder. Visiting Scholar & Adjunct Professor. 🐻 Ion Stocia Co-founder & Executive Chairman. Professor EECS. Article

🤖 Perplexity. $500M 🇺🇸 AI-powered discovery tools. 💰 IVP, NEA, B Capital.

🐻 Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder & CEO. PhD CS. 🐻 Andy Konwinski, Co-Founder & President. PhD & MS Computer Science. Article

🧠 Precision Neuroscience. $102M Series C 🇺🇸 Brain-computer interface. 💰 General Equity Holdings, B Capital.

🐻 Mark Hettick, Co-Founder & VP Engineering. PhD & BS EECS. Article

🌳 Terviva. $46.2M 🇺🇸 Sustainable food tech. 💰 Emerson Collective, National Science Foundation, Neglected Climate Opportunities.

🐻 Naveen Sikka, CEO. Haas MBA.

🔋 AM Batteries. $44M Series B 🇺🇸 Solvent-free lithium batteries. 💰 Foothill Ventures, Porsche Ventures, TDK Ventures.

🐻 Heng Pan, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist. PhD. Article

🎮 Agave Games. $18M Series A 🇹🇷 Mobile game publisher. 💰 Balderton Capital, e2vc, Felix Capital.

🐻 Alper Oner, Co-Founder & CEO. BS Industrial Engineering. Article

🧬 Editpep. $8.4M 🇺🇸 CRISPR delivery peptides. 💰 Berkeley SkyDeck.

🐻 Dana Foss, Co-Founder & CEO. Post Doc. Article

🧪 Xcell Biosciences. $1.4M 🇺🇸 Cell therapy tools. 💰 DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Viking Global Investors.

🐻 Brian Feth, CEO & Founder. Haas MBA. Article

Built By Berkeley Tracker

Our goal is to document the startup ecosystem of Berkeley-founded companies. Please share this newsletter with any Cal Bears in your network so we can crowdsource information about all investment rounds and job opportunities.

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Built By Berkeley is not affiliated with UC Berkeley, but maybe we will be one day if we get enough subscribers….