Databricks has bought two startups to support its new AI security product

With an overflowing war script from the $5 billion raise it closed last month (not to mention billions in revenue), Databricks is making an acquisition.

The company, best known for its cloud data analytics platform, was announced on Tuesday that it launched a new security product called Lakewatch. Lakewatch uses Databricks’ ability to store massive amounts of data and performs classic Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tasks such as threat detection and investigation. Except it does so with the help of AI agents powered by Anthropic’s Claude.

Databricks has bought two startups to support this new product: Antimatter, in a previously undisclosed deal that closed last year, and SiftD.ai, in a deal completed in the past two weeks that closed on Monday, the company told TechCrunch.

Terms were not disclosed for either deal. Founded by security researcher Andrew Krioukov, Antimatter has raised $12 million led by New Enterprise Associates in 2022, according to PitchBook estimates. If tiny SiftD.ai had raised money, PitchBook didn’t know.

SiftD.ai was so new, 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 (until 2021). He created the Search Processing Language while there. (His LinkedIn He also says he was CTO of Coldplay CEO scandal Astronomer, but left in 2023 before founding SiftD.)

Both of these acquisitions involved small startups — just a few people in the case of SiftD and less than 50 for Antimatter, according to LinkedIn. SiftD seems to be a legacy. With Antimatter, Databricks likely acquired some IP as well. Kryukov had demonstrated Antimatter technology on stage 2024 in the RSA Innovation Sandbox Competition. Antimatter was working on a “data control” tool that allowed enterprises to deploy agents securely while protecting sensitive data.

While Databricks declined to say how many employees it gained, it confirmed that employees of the startups did join the company. Kryukov, who has been at Databricks for months now, leads the Lakewatch team.

We asked Databricks if it was going to continue to shop for startups, and a representative basically said, yes, it has its own all the time. “We’re always looking for what’s next – our aim is to stay ahead of the market and close the gaps in what our customers need,” the spokesperson said.