Databricks to hire hundreds in India to accelerate AI boom

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% 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.