Databricks inks $100M deal with OpenAI for enterprise AI

Databricks and OpenAI have partnered in a $100 million deal to promote AI agent adoption across enterprises. This deal allows enterprise clients to build AI agents and applications on their corporate data easily.

Databricks will invest $100 million over several years in OpenAI’s models, including the latest GPT-5. The integration will allow more than 20,000 Databricks customers globally to access the models, enabling them to build AI agents and applications easily.

Databricks clients get a boost from GPT models

Ali Ghodsi, CEO and Co-founder of Databricks, revealed that they are witnessing increased demand from enterprise customers who seek to build AI apps and agents. According to Ghodsi, the collaboration makes it easier for corporations to securely use propriety data with OpenAI models at scale and with better governance and performance.

Big news: Databricks and @OpenAI are partnering to deliver powerful AI to the enterprise. OpenAI frontier models will now be available natively in Databricks.

This means you can build, evaluate and scale production-grade AI apps and agents on your governed enterprise data,… pic.twitter.com/7uHKa733AU

— Databricks (@databricks) September 25, 2025

OpenAI’s COO Brad Lightcap described data as the lifeblood of AI systems while sharing his hope that, from experimentation to deployment, the partnership will be able to accelerate enterprises with AI adoption as the firm looks to build more powerful software. Lightcap confirmed the deal will generate more revenue than the committed $100 million.

The Databricks Agents tool will now be natively integrated with OpenAI’s models, allowing customers to develop AI agents capable of reasoning, automating workflows, and generating insights without moving sensitive data from their governed data centers. The Data analytics firm also confirmed that its Unity catalogue will provide governance and compliance standards, while research teams from both firms continue to improve the models for enterprise use cases. 

Greg Ulrich, Chief AI and Data Officer at Mastercard, revealed that they are focused on delivering AI solutions that make commerce safer, smarter, and more personalized. He highlighted that Agentic solutions strengthen their internal operations by automating processes and optimizing system performance. According to Ulrich, the collaboration would enable Mastercard to build on the strong foundations it has established with OpenAI and Databricks, providing an opportunity to build trusted AI agents. 

AI competition escalates amid enterprise adoption

The deal comes amid a wave of companies seeking to apply LLMs to specific healthcare, finance, and manufacturing applications. However, the integration of LLMs has been slow due to reliability and complexity concerns. Research efforts are focusing on achieving agent accuracy rates above 95%, which are comparable to those of human employees. 

Forge Global Data values OpenAI at $500 billion after a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle and data center projects with SoftBank. The company also announced a $100 billion investment from Nvidia this week. On the other hand, the valuation of Databricks stands at $100 billion. The data analytics firm reported that its annual revenue surpassed $4 billion, with $1 billion raised from AI investments and an overall growth of 50% yearly.

Cryptopolitan revealed that the five-year $300 billion cloud computing deal will begin in 2027. The plan includes 4.5 gigawatts of power to support new AI infrastructure. Oracle stock surged to over 42% following the announcement. 

The AI landscape has shown heightened competition recently, following multiple companies and startups forging collaborations with market giants. Snowflake recently collaborated with Microsoft to bring OpenAI’s models into its platform. Oracle has also announced plans to allow customers to run models from , Google, and xAI directly on its database software starting this October. 

Executives from OpenAI and Databricks are scheduled to host a joint event in November to discuss the future of AI agents and how enterprises can deploy them at scale.

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