What If Meta Acquired Databricks

In a moment of speculative musing, Anshu Sharma, Co-founder & CEO of Skyflow, took to LinkedIn to provoke a thought experiment—one that shook the data community and drew out some of the industry's sharpest minds. He asked, "What if Meta decides to get in the game by acquiring Databricks or Snowflake?" With just that one question, Sharma lit the spark for an interesting discussion: could Meta, a company primarily focused on social media, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, ever enter the enterprise data space?

This speculation is intriguing because of its scale—the ramifications of such a move would be huge, both for the companies involved and for the entire tech ecosystem. Let’s break down this scenario: what would happen if Meta really did acquire a major player like Databricks or Snowflake?

Why Meta and Why Now?

Meta is a company with significant resources, deep AI expertise, and an appetite for transformative technology. However, for a company historically rooted in consumer products—social media, the metaverse, and advertisement—the acquisition of an enterprise software company like Databricks or Snowflake might seem far-fetched. Meta's current strategy centers around generative AI, with the Llama models leading their efforts. As Ali Ghodsi, CEO & Co-Founder at Databricks, pointed out in a recent post, "Llama 3.1 has seen impressive growth, doubling its usage between May and July 2024." Meta's Llama is a direct investment in AI capabilities, but would acquiring a big data company further boost their leverage?

The first argument in favor of Meta acquiring an enterprise data company like Databricks or Snowflake is access to a vast market beyond AI-focused models. Data management and analytics are among the hottest areas in tech, with businesses all around the world clamoring for efficient tools to wrangle their vast data reserves. With Databricks, known for its data intelligence capabilities, Meta could potentially add a strong data analytics backbone to its AI strategy. In other words, combining Llama’s AI power with the data efficiency of Databricks could create a supercharged platform for business intelligence and AI applications.