Databricks and Microsoft have extended their strategic partnership into the 2030s, expanding Azure Databricks, Azure Cobalt, and native Microsoft integrations to help enterprises deploy AI grounded in business context with stronger governance, performance, and cost control.<\/p>\n
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Databricks<\/a> and Microsoft<\/a> have expanded their long-standing strategic partnership through the next decade, reinforcing a collaboration centered on enterprise AI, cloud infrastructure, and data platforms. The agreement deepens Databricks’ commitment to Microsoft Azure while extending native integrations across Microsoft’s software ecosystem, reflecting growing enterprise demand for AI systems that operate with business-specific context rather than generic models.<\/p>\n The renewed alliance comes as organizations seek to move beyond AI experimentation and deploy models and agents capable of understanding proprietary business data, operations, and processes while maintaining governance, security, and cost efficiency.<\/p>\n Under the agreement, Databricks will run its own core business operations on Azure Databricks, increase its adoption of Microsoft’s Azure Cobalt infrastructure, and continue expanding integrations between its Data Intelligence Platform and Microsoft products.<\/p>\n “During nearly a decade, Databricks and Microsoft have helped enterprises innovate with data and AI,” says Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO, Databricks. “Today, our partnership is stronger than ever. With Databricks Genie and Unity AI Gateway deeply integrated into Microsoft products, we are helping organizations unify their data and ground AI in business knowledge. This enables customers to realize the benefits of AI agents and models while controlling costs and ensuring governance.”<\/p>\n Extending Enterprise AI Through Azure<\/p>\n A central component of the expanded partnership is Databricks’ decision to operate its own mission-critical business and analytics workloads on Azure Databricks. By using the same platform it offers customers, the company aims to demonstrate enterprise-scale performance while strengthening its long-term investment in Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.<\/p>\n The agreement also expands Databricks’ use of Azure Cobalt, Microsoft’s Arm-based infrastructure designed for compute-intensive workloads. Databricks currently uses Cobalt 100 processors and plans to adopt Cobalt 200, which Microsoft says delivers up to 50% higher performance while enabling memory encryption by default.<\/p>\n According to the companies, these infrastructure investments are intended to improve efficiency for AI agents and large-scale data workloads while reducing operational costs for enterprise deployments. “The next generation of AI will be defined by how effectively organizations transform their unique knowledge into intelligence,” says Judson Althoff, CEO, Microsoft Commercial Business. “Microsoft and Databricks are helping customers connect data, AI and business context to accelerate decision-making and deliver measurable impact.”<\/p>\n Althoff says Databricks’ expanded investment in Azure Databricks and Azure Cobalt will provide customers with greater performance, efficiency and scalability for demanding workloads. He adds that Databricks’ decision to run its own core business operations on Azure Databricks gives customers additional confidence in the platform’s enterprise capabilities.<\/p>\n Business Context Becomes Central to Enterprise AI<\/p>\n