Databricks Announces Over 70% Annualized Growth in France as Demand for the Data Intelligence Platform Grows

• Databricks continues to invest in France with a new Paris office, university partnerships, and its annual Data and AI World Tour
• Over 90% of the CAC 40 drives innovation with the Data Intelligence Platform

Paris, France - 20 November 2024 - Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announced it experienced over 70% annualized growth for its French business and opened a new dedicated office space in La Fondation in central Paris. The new office will house a growing team of over 150 employees and support even more local customers. The data intelligence pioneer has also forged partnerships with local universities, deepened cloud partnerships, and hosted its flagship Data + AI World Tour at the París La Défense Arena on 20th November.

Driving customer adoption of the Data Intelligence Platform

Databricks’ growth in France is fuelled by demand for the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform from organizations such as EcoVadis, ENGIE, L'Oréal, Michelin, Schneider Electric, SNCF TER, TotalEnergies and Worldline. The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform democratizes access to analytics and intelligent applications by marrying customers’ data with powerful AI models tuned to the unique characteristics of their business. The Data Intelligence Platform is built on a lakehouse foundation of open data formats and open governance to ensure that all data is completely within the customers’ control.

“At EcoVadis, our mission is to provide reliable, globally recognized sustainability ratings and insights, enabling all companies to reduce risk, drive improvement and accelerate positive impact on our planet and society,“ said Frédéric Trinel, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, EcoVadis. “By working with Databricks, we have been able to implement a Data Intelligence Platform that seamlessly unifies all of our data sources, cuts down data processing times and serves as the foundation for various data and AI projects. Because of the governance controls the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform provides in combination with our Enterprise Catalog, our team is able to flexibly and autonomously manage data sets to meet the diverse needs of our customers.”

“Worldline is one of Europe's leading payments players, handling more than 50 billion transactions per year. As the company grew, we needed to put in place an environment that would enable us to consolidate massive volumes of data, while at the same time powering artificial intelligence engines that feed off this data, notably to support fraud detection. That's why we turned to the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.“ said Stephan Pirson, Chief Data Officer for Merchant Services at Worldline. “Today, our entire ecosystem benefits from our collaboration with Databricks: our internal teams have a unified view of the data thanks to comprehensive dashboards for monitoring important key performance indicators (KPIs) linked to financial reports, forecasts and sales performance, and our customers, from small shops to major retailers, have access to data that enables them to benchmark performance, process refunds and visualize transaction trends. “

Upskilling with data and AI competencies

As part of its ambitions to grow in France, Databricks has also formed partnerships with over 40 universities such as Centrale-Supelec, Dauphine, Ecole Polytechnique, and Mines Paris as part of its global University Alliance Program, which equips data science students with skills in big data programming, analytics and AI.

“It couldn't be a more exciting time for Databricks in France with our wide ecosystem of partners and data-forward customers,” said Guillaume Brandenburg, Regional Vice President, France, Databricks. “Not only do we want our own team to benefit from collaborating on the latest data and AI projects in our dedicated new office space, but we also want to do our part to train local students as the demand for data and AI talent grows exponentially in France.”

Deepening partnerships with open source and cloud leaders

Databricks is committed to investing in France’s vibrant AI and open source community. Earlier this year, Databricks announced a partnership and participation in a Series A funding round for Mistral AI, one of Europe's leading providers of generative AI solutions. Databricks and Mistral AI now offer Mistral AI’s open models natively integrated within the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

Databricks also deepened partnerships with its cloud partners in the region. In the second half of 2024, Databricks launched Serverless SQL, Workflows, Notebooks, and Delta Live Tables in Azure France Central to support its growing customer base. Since launching Databricks in the AWS France (Paris) Region in the first half of 2023, customers with low latency requirements such as the Government, Education, and Industrial Manufacturing sectors, benefited greatly from Databricks local availability, all in accordance with local regulations.

Driving momentum with the Data and AI World Tour

Databricks’ Data + AI World Tour event series will have spanned eight cities by the end of November 2024 in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and serve as a platform for data and AI professionals to connect, learn, and share best practices. The Paris event was held at París La Défense Arena on 20th November. Customer speakers included Clarins, Danone, In The Memory, EcoVadis, Edenred, ENGIE, Mirakl, SNCF, Societe Generale, Stellantis, STMICROELECTRONICS, and Ubisoft who all shared insights on how they are innovating with data and AI.

“France is at the beating heart of our business in Southern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (SEMEA) and we have big ambitions to help even more French organizations innovate with data and AI,” said Yannis Daubin, VP SEMEA, Databricks. “Our Data and AI World Tour was packed with insights from customers, partners and training sessions. Furthermore, our new office space, growing team, initiatives to upskill local universities and our continued cloud partnerships and strategic investments all signal our momentum and how we are well poised to continue to support French enterprises of all sizes to develop data intelligence.”

About Databricks

Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Block, Comcast, Condé Nast, Rivian, Shell and over 60% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to take control of their data and put it to work with AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe, and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on LinkedIn, X and Facebook.