Analytics and AI giant Databricks reportedly paid nearly $2 billion when it acquired Tabular in June, a startup that was only doing $1 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Bloomberg. That’s a pretty outrageous exit multiple, and it was purportedly fueled by a battle between Databricks and Snowflake.
Tabular had over $30 million in funding, backed by Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Zetta Venture Partners, when it was acquired just three years after it was founded. Tabular’s valuation was tied to Apache Iceberg, a popular open source table format that the startup’s founders created while at Netflix. The startup quickly became an expensive pawn in the war between Databricks and Snowflake. In fact, some Databricks employees were reportedly asked to like or share their CEO’s LinkedIn posts dunking on Snowflake, according to Bloomberg.
Snowflake’s stock price has fallen 36% this year, with its market cap of roughly $43 billion equal to Databricks’ current valuation. It didn’t help that Snowflake was linked to a massive data breach affecting “nearly all” of AT&T’s customers in July.
