Databricks adds OpenAI models in $100M enterprise push

Databricks has announced a multi‑year, $100 million partnership with OpenAI to make the latter’s models including GPT‑5 natively available across the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and its new Agent Bricks product, in a move aimed at speeding up safe, governed AI adoption in large organisations.

The company has said OpenAI models are now integrated directly into its platform and Agent Bricks, bringing frontier models “to where enterprise data already lives” for more than 20,000 customers. GPT‑5 has been positioned as a flagship option under the deal.

How the integration works

OpenAI models have been made callable inside Databricks via SQL or API, so data teams can build and scale AI applications and agents without moving data out of governed environments. Unity Catalogue has provided end‑to‑end governance and observability across models and data, with Databricks saying customers will benefit from dedicated, high‑capacity access to OpenAI’s latest models.

Agent Bricks unveiled earlier this year has been designed to evaluate model quality on task‑specific benchmarks, apply LLM‑based judges, and then optimise or fine‑tune agents for domain‑specific outputs on enterprise data.

Why it matters for enterprises

Databricks co‑founder and chief executive Ali Ghodsi has said in reports that customer demand for production‑grade agents on governed data has surged, arguing the partnership has made it simpler to “securely leverage their data and OpenAI models at scale.”

OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap has said in reports that the tie‑up has made it easier for businesses to experiment with, deploy and scale agents “with real impact.”

Early customer momentum has included Mastercard, which has described Agent Bricks as a way to build trusted, production‑ready agents atop its existing Databricks foundations.

Expanding Databricks–OpenAI footprint

The partnership has followed OpenAI’s release of open‑weight models gpt‑oss‑20B and gpt‑oss‑120B, which enterprises can self‑host or access via supported providers.

Databricks has said it has been among the first to host these models, alongside making OpenAI’s proprietary models available natively.

Databricks has continued to expand its AI partnerships and war chest. In August, the company raised a round valuing it at more than $100 billion.

Earlier this year, it also entered a five‑year arrangement with Anthropic, targeting $100 million in revenue from joint enterprise AI offerings.