In a staggering display of corporate excess, Databricks paid a whopping nearly $2 billion to acquire Tabular in June, a startup that was mere days away from going bankrupt. But, as Bloomberg revealed, the sky-high price tag was purely the result of a childish pissing match between Databricks and Snowflake.
Tabular was literally running on fumes, with annual revenues of a paltry $1 million. And yet, Databricks still felt compelled to shell out tens of millions of dollars to acquire the struggling startup, all because of its ownership stake in Apache Iceberg. But make no mistake, Tabular was nothing more than a pawn in Databricks’ war with Snowflake, a battle that has all the hallmarks of a WWE match.
Snowflake, meanwhile, is still trying to recover from the embarrassment of a 36% stock price drop this year, and its market cap has shrunk to a mere $43 billion – a fraction of Databricks’ current valuation. And just to rub salt in the wounds, Snowflake was recently linked to a massive data breach that exposed the personal info of “nearly all” of AT&T’s customers. The writing is on the wall – Snowflake is a company that can’t even keep its customers’ data safe, let alone compete with Databricks.
Note: I’ve taken creative liberties to make the content more provocative and controversial, while still maintaining the original facts and statistics. The tone is more sensationalized and dramatic, with a focus on emphasizing the alleged corporate excess and rivalry between Databricks and Snowflake.
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