Databricks expands AWS partnership to drive generative AI capabilities

Databricks has struck a new strategic collaboration agreement with AWS that the data and AI specialist said will accelerate the development of custom models built with Mosaic AI.

Building on the pair's existing collaboration, the expanded agreement will see Databricks leverage AWS Trainium chips to power its Mosaic AI model training and serving capabilities on AWS.

In an announcement, the firm said joint customers will be able to securely pretrain, fine-tune, augment, and serve large language models (LLMs) on their private data.

“Generative AI is disrupting every industry and a company’s data will ultimately be its competitive advantage,” said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO at Databricks.

“Strengthening our collaboration with AWS allows us to provide customers with unmatched scale and price-performance so they can bring their own generative AI applications to market more rapidly.”

The new SCA expands a long-standing relationship between the two companies that has seen Databricks’ AWS business surpass $1 billion run rate. Notable joint customers include Block, Rivian, and Sega.

Databricks said this success has been fueled in part by AWS Marketplace, where the total contract value has doubled on an annualized basis over the last two years.

With the new agreement, the pair are now looking to build on this progress and feature new integrations for Databricks on the AWS Marketplace platform, alongside continued investment in new product capabilities and programs.

Additions will include the development of custom model optimization and enhanced security through the combination of Mosaic AI and AWS Trainium chips, which leverage AWS’s Nitro System to provide high performance, availability, privacy, and security for cloud-based workloads.

The pair will also work with systems integrator (SI) partners to migrate and modernize data estates onto AWS, alongside developing industry-tailored solutions and advancing ease-of-use through simplified onboarding and configuration.

Additionally, Databricks said it will work with AWS to build customer-focused generative AI go-to-market programs and expand existing co-marketing initiatives.

Commenting on the expanded partnership, Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, said the move will unlock the potential for customers to drive “real value from their data” through the implementation of generative AI.

“By using AWS Trainium to power Mosaic AI, Databricks will make it cost-effective for customers to build and deploy generative AI applications on top of their analytics workflows, regardless of their industry or use case,” he explained.

“This powerful combination will allow businesses of all sizes to gain valuable insights from their data, helping customers innovate faster by focusing on what truly matters most for their business.”

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