How to invest in Databricks IPO: buy Databricks stock

What is Databricks?

Founded in 2013 in San Francisco by the creators of Apache Spark at UC Berkeley, Databricks is a data and AI platform used by companies to store, process and analyse data and to build and run AI models on it. It is best known for spearheading the “lakehouse” architecture, which combines the low cost of a data lake (raw data in cheap cloud storage) with the structure and performance of a data warehouse (organised, processed data ready to query).

The platform runs on top of the big three clouds (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud), which are also Databricks’ main partners and, increasingly, its competitors, since each sells its own data and AI tools. Its most direct rival is Snowflake, which went public in September 2020.

Databricks charges on a consumption basis (you pay for the compute you use), and it has grown fast:

• Revenue run rate: above $7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, growing more than 80% year over year, up from $5.4 billion in February 2026, $4.8 billion in December 2025 and about $1 billion in 2022.
• AI products: a run rate above $1.4 billion (February 2026), driven by the Mosaic AI tools it built after buying MosaicML for $1.3 billion in 2023.
• Customers: more than 15,000, including over 800 spending at least $1 million a year and over 70 spending at least $10 million, with net revenue retention above 140%.
• Profitability: positive free cash flow over the trailing twelve months, a rarity among the AI companies queuing up to list.

The company has also been an active acquirer, buying Tabular (the company behind the Apache Iceberg table format) for more than $1 billion in 2024, and Neon (serverless Postgres, about $1 billion) and Tecton in 2025, which became the basis of its Lakebase database product, already above a $100 million run rate.

When is Databricks’ IPO date?

There is no official IPO date. Management has ruled out 2026, and the earliest realistic window is 2027.

Databricks has been “IPO-ready” for years but keeps choosing private capital instead, because it can raise billions at rising valuations without the disclosure and volatility that come with a listing. Here is how the valuation has climbed:

Its investor list reads like a who’s who of growth capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Insight Partners, Thrive Capital, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Franklin Templeton, Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), the Qatar Investment Authority and MGX, alongside strategic investors Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Nvidia.

A list like that means the company has no urgent need for public money. The trigger for an IPO will be timing (a calmer IPO calendar and a receptive market), not readiness. Watch for a confidential S-1 filing, which typically comes six to twelve months before a listing.

How to buy Databricks stock

Until the IPO, retail investors cannot buy Databricks shares on a stock exchange. Your options are:

1. Wait for the IPO: once Databricks lists, you can buy the shares on the first trading day through any broker with access to US exchanges, such as Interactive Brokers, eToro or Trading 212. Interactive Brokers also lets eligible clients place conditional offers to buy IPO shares at the offering price through its IPO subscription service, when the underwriters allocate stock to it.
2. Pre-IPO secondary platforms: services such as Forge Global, EquityZen and Hiive let accredited investors buy shares from employees and early investors, usually with high minimums ($10,000 or more), fees of several percent and no guarantee of availability. Not suitable for most retail investors.
3. Indirect exposure: some listed closed-end funds and venture trusts hold Databricks shares as part of a broader portfolio of late-stage private companies, but Databricks will only ever be a small slice of those funds.

If you are outside the US, remember that European brokers often cannot offer US IPO allocations to retail clients, so the first-day secondary market is the realistic route.

Is the Databricks IPO a good investment?

Generally, investing in an IPO is riskier than investing in a stock already known to the public market, because the company’s financial history is short and the first months of trading are often volatile.

However, a few essential items remain on your analytical checklist, no matter the stock or sector:

1. Gross revenue (“top line”) and its growth rate
2. The revenue drivers, such as customer growth and net revenue retention
3. Profit margins and free cash flow
4. Its private valuation growth from round to round
5. Cumulative funding and current (pre-IPO) investors
6. The management team
7. Its competitors

If an S-1 filing has already occurred, a great place to start is reading the prospectus on the SEC’s EDGAR database. This helps cut through the noise and hype typically surrounding an IPO.

Before a filing, the information comes from the company’s own announcements and from reputable outlets such as CNBC, Bloomberg, The Information or TechCrunch. With respect to Databricks, this is what is known as of September 2026:

1. Revenue: run rate above $7 billion, growing more than 80% year over year (Q2 2026)
2. Customers: 15,000+, with 800+ above $1 million a year and net revenue retention above 140%
3. Profitability: free cash flow positive, exact figures undisclosed
4. Private valuation: $190 billion (August 2026), about 27 times run-rate revenue
5. Total funding: roughly $25 billion
6. Management: CEO and co-founder Ali Ghodsi was one of the creators of Apache Spark and is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley
7. Competitors: Snowflake (listed, product revenue of about $4.5 billion in its fiscal 2026, now below Databricks’ run rate), plus the native tools of AWS, Microsoft and Google

The bull case is simple: a profitable platform growing at 80% a year, sitting under most enterprise AI projects. The bear case is the price. At $190 billion, the market is already paying for many years of growth, and IPOs of companies that raised their last private round at a rich valuation often price at a discount to it (Databricks’ investors will want the shares to “pop” on day one). Add the dependence on the three clouds that are also its rivals, and the capital intensity of the AI build-out, and you have a stock to size carefully rather than to chase.

As always, look for consistent growth over several years without breaks in momentum, and read the S-1 in full when it comes: the income statement and balance sheet it will contain are exactly what private investors cannot see today.

Bottom line

We’re excited about the Databricks IPO, but it is not happening in 2026. The company is worth $190 billion in the private market, runs above $7 billion in annualised revenue and, unlike most of the AI cohort waiting to list, already generates free cash flow.

It’s clear the company tapped into a huge market, captivating the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Nvidia as investors. While the “smart money” follows Databricks, investors should never turn complacent: the eventual IPO will be priced for perfection, and any growth story needs consistency and solid, audited financials. We will update this article when an S-1 is filed.