Databricks bought two startups to underpin its new AI security product
With an overflowing war chest from its $5 billion raise that closed last month (not to mention billions in revenue), Databricks is acquiring. The company, best known for its cloud data analytics platform, announced on Tuesday that it was launching a new security product called Lakewatch.
Lakewatch takes Databricks’ ability to store massive amounts of data and performs classic Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tasks, like detecting and investigating threats. Only it does so with the help of AI agents powered by Anthropic’s Claude.
Databricks bought two startups to underpin this new product: Antimatter, in an undisclosed-until-now deal that closed last year, and SiftD.ai, in a deal that flew together over the last couple of weeks and closed on Monday, the company told TechCrunch. Terms were not disclosed for either deal. Antimatter, founded by security researcher Andrew Krioukov, raised $12 million led by New Enterprise Associates in 2022, according to Pitchbook estimates. If tiny SiftD.ai had raised money, Pitchbook wasn’t aware. SiftD.ai was so young, it had only launched its product in November: an interactive notebook (like a Jupyter notebook) intended to be a tool where people and agents worked together.
The Databricks team knew the startup’s co-founder CEO Steve Zhang from his many years as chief scientist at Splunk (through 2021). He created the Search Processing Language while there. (His LinkedIn also says he was CTO of Astronomer, of the Coldplay CEO scandal, but left there in 2023 before founding SiftD.) Both of these acquisitions were of small startups only a few people in SiftD’s case and less than 50 for Antimatter, according to LinkedIn. SiftD appears to be an acquihire.
With Antimatter, Databricks probably gained some IP, too. Krioukov had demonstrated Antimatter’s tech on stage in 2024 at RSA’s Innovation Sandbox Contest. Antimatter was working on a “data control plane” tool that allowed enterprises to deploy agents securely, while protecting sensitive data. While Databricks declined to say how many employees it acquired, it confirmed that the startups’ employees did join the company. Krioukov, who’s been at Databricks for months now, is leading the Lakewatch team.
We asked Databricks if it was going to keep shopping for startups and a spokesperson essentially said, yes, that it continuously has its feelers out. “We’re always looking to what’s next — our goal is to stay ahead of the market and close gaps in what our customers need,” the spokesperson said.
