Bloomberg reports that Databricks, a leading analytics and AI company, acquired Tabular in June for nearly $2 billion
Tabular was a startup that generated only $1 million in annual recurring revenue. This is an extremely unusual exit multiple, purportedly resulting from a conflict between Databricks and Snowflake.
Three years after its inception, Tabular was acquired with over $30 million in funding from Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Zetta Venture Partners. The startup’s founders developed Apache Iceberg, a prominent open-source table format used to determine Tabular’s valuation at Netflix.
The startup rapidly became an expensive instrument in the conflict between Databricks and Snowflake. Bloomberg has reported that certain Databricks employees were reportedly requested to like or share their CEO’s negative LinkedIn posts about Snowflake.
This year, Snowflake’s stock price has declined by 36%, and its market capitalization of approximately $43 billion is equivalent to Databricks’ current valuation. The fact that Snowflake was associated with a significant data compromise that affected “nearly all” of AT&T’s customers in July was not a helping factor.