According to Bloomberg, analytics and AI giant Databricks reportedly paid nearly $2 billion to acquire Tabular in June, a startup with just $1 million in annual recurring revenue. That’s a ridiculous exit multiple, and it’s said to have been fueled by competition between Databricks and Snowflake.
Tabular was acquired just three years after its founding, raising more than $30 million in funding from Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Zetta Venture Partners. Tabular’s valuation was tied to Apache Iceberg, the popular open-source table format the startup’s founders created while at Netflix. The startup quickly became an expensive scapegoat in the war between Databricks and Snowflake. In fact, according to Bloomberg, some Databricks employees were asked to dunk or share Snowflake on the CEO’s LinkedIn posts.
Snowflake’s stock price is down 36% this year, and its market cap is about $43 billion, about the same as Databricks’ current valuation. It didn’t help that Snowflake was linked to a massive data breach in July that affected “almost all” AT&T customers.
