Databricks to hire hundreds, invest $250 mn in India to boost AI push

By Saritha Rai

 

Databricks Inc. will boost hiring and invest more than $250 million in India over the next three years to accelerate artificial intelligence innovation, joining a flood of Western tech and AI companies expanding in the country.

 

The San Francisco-based firm, one of the world’s most valuable privately held tech companies, will increase its India headcount by more than 50 per cent to about 750 by the end of the fiscal year, it said in a statement on Thursday. That includes a doubling of the number of engineers at its new Bangalore research center to more than 200.

 

The India push expands Databricks’ network of R&D centers beyond Amsterdam, Berlin and Mountain View, California. The company, founded in 2013, builds software for aggregating, analyzing and distributing data, a hot segment fueling the boom in AI models, tools and services. 

 

“India is emerging as a global AI talent hub,” Rochana Golani, vice president of learning and enablement at Databricks, said in the statement.

 

Early this year, the company raised more than $15 billion in equity and debt from companies including Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc., a wide range of lenders and investment arms of Singapore and Qatar. Most recently valued at $62 billion, the company has so far avoided going public.

 

Databricks will launch an AI and data academy in India with the goal of training half a million partners and customers over the next three years.