Databricks Acquires Cloud Spreadsheet Startup Row Zero, Plans More Deals
Databricks’ finance team adopted Row Zero for spreadsheets exceeding 1 million live rows, prompting an acquisition and planned integration with its Genie AI agent. Terms weren’t disclosed; Row Zero raised $10 million in May 2025 at a $40 million valuation.
Databricks announced on September 24, 2026 that it has acquired Row Zero, an early-stage cloud spreadsheet startup, adding to a string of purchases the company has made throughout the year.
The acquisition originated with Databricks’ own finance team, which had adopted Row Zero for its ability to handle spreadsheets exceeding one million live rows in the cloud. When company leadership learned the team was using the tool, they saw an opportunity to integrate it with Genie, Databricks’ homegrown AI agent that lets users query data stored in Databricks systems using natural-language prompts.
“Spreadsheets are one such interface that every business analyst loves. So it makes a lot of sense to intermarry Business Intelligence (BI), Agents, and Spreadsheets!” Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi wrote on X.
The practical result of the integration is that enterprise data stored securely in Databricks’ cloud can be accessed and manipulated through familiar spreadsheet formats and formulas, rather than requiring users to learn separate business intelligence software. The arrangement also keeps data from being transferred to less secure, shared spreadsheet files.
Row Zero was founded by former AWS and Tableau engineers and raised $10 million in May 2025 at an estimated $40 million valuation, according to PitchBook. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The deal is part of a broader acquisition push for Databricks in 2026. In March, the company acquired Quotient AI, an AI agent evaluation and reinforcement learning startup, and early-stage notebook startup SiftD.ai. In June, it purchased AI security operations center startup Panther, previously valued at $1.4 billion in 2021. Last month, it acquired Electric, the maker of PGlite, a lightweight Postgres database designed for agents running locally on devices.
Databricks, which closed $5 billion in additional funding in August and reported $7 billion in annualized revenue run rate, has signaled the pace will continue. “We intend to do many more acquisitions like this in the future,” Ghodsi told TechCrunch.