Microsoft (MSFT.US) and data and artificial intelligence company Databricks have announced the expansion of their strategic partnership, which has spanned over a decade, extending the collaboration into the 2030s. This move is aimed at helping enterprises build and deploy enterprise-grade AI applications based on their own business data.
Under the new agreement, Databricks will deepen its usage of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Its core business operations and unified lakehouse architecture will run on Azure Databricks, and it will adopt Microsoft's next-generation, Arm-based Azure Cobalt infrastructure to boost performance and energy efficiency. Azure Databricks is a jointly developed solution that unifies data, analytics, and AI on the Azure cloud platform.
On the infrastructure front, Databricks will expand its use of Microsoft's in-house Arm-based chip, Azure Cobalt. The company currently runs workloads on Cobalt 100 processors and plans to further adopt Cobalt 200—Microsoft claims this chip offers up to a 50% performance improvement over its predecessor and comes with memory encryption enabled by default. This initiative highlights how both companies are using custom chip optimization to address performance challenges related to data-intensive and AI agent workloads, as demand for AI computing power continues to rise.
The two companies stated that Microsoft will also continue to integrate Databricks' data and AI platform capabilities into its entire product lineup, embedding features including the AI collaborator Genie directly into customer workflows. Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi commented, "By deeply integrating Databricks Genie and Unity AI Gateway into Microsoft's product ecosystem, we are helping enterprises unify their data assets and root AI in business knowledge. This allows customers to fully unlock the value of agents and models while effectively controlling costs and ensuring governance compliance."
Comments