Databricks acquires Row Zero startup — TechCrunch

Databricks has acquired early-stage startup Row Zero, which develops cloud-based spreadsheets. TechCrunch reports on the deal. The parties did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.

Spreadsheets and AI agents

Databricks’ finance team used Row Zero as a cloud tool capable of scaling to more than one million rows in a spreadsheet. It was combined with Genie, an AI agent developed by Databricks. With Genie, Databricks users can ask natural-language questions about data stored in the company’s systems, including analyzing margins or the status of prospective customers.

Ali Ghodsi noted that spreadsheets are a familiar interface for business analysts, so combining them with business intelligence tools and AI agents is logical. The integration of Row Zero is expected to enable people and AI agents to interact with secure corporate data in spreadsheet format and using familiar formulas, without moving information into unsecured files shared by users.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

A series of acquisitions in 2026

Row Zero was founded by former AWS and Tableau engineers. In May 2025, the startup raised $10 million at a valuation of about $40 million, according to PitchBook.

Databricks also intends to make similar new acquisitions. In March, the company bought Quotient AI, which works on evaluation and reinforcement learning for AI agents, as well as SiftD.ai, an early-stage developer of an interactive notebook. In June, Databricks acquired Panther, a startup in the field of AI security operations centers, and last month it acquired Electric, the developer of the compact PostgreSQL PGlite database for running agents locally on devices.

In August, Databricks raised another $5 billion in funding and reached an annual revenue run rate of $7 billion.