US software vendor giant Databricks opened its first office in Israel to grow its business in the country and tap into local talent.
The San Francisco-based company, a developer of a multi-cloud data-storage platform to help companies harvest and analyze large amounts of information, said the Herzliya office is headed by Lior Tzabari, a former Hewlett Packard executive and country manager at Cloudera in Israel.
For now, the Israel office will have a team of 10 people, including sales account executives and strategic solutions architects, to help local customers scale data analytics. Over the course of the year, Databricks — which is valued at $38 billion — expects the Israel team to grow by 50%.
Tzabari said the launch of the Tel Aviv office represents a “strategic opportunity” and comes at a “pivotal point in history where business leaders in Israel are awakening to the power of data and AI.”
“I firmly believe that data and AI adoption will accelerate our country’s already tech-savvy ecosystem of homegrown digital natives,” he added. “The surge in demand for effective and scalable AI strategies, makes us well positioned to support local customers on their data and AI journeys.”
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Databricks said the fast pace of AI discoveries and surge in popularity of large language models (LLMs) and other new products are encouraging businesses to prioritize their data and artificial intelligence strategies. Its open cloud platform is used by over 50% of Fortune 500 companies to unify data, analytics and AI, and runs on all major clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Among its Israeli customers are Kaltura, Nexar, Forter and Akamai Technologies.
“The Israeli market has so much potential because a lot of our customers are digital natives, meaning they were ‘born in the cloud’ and are quickly seizing on opportunities to build effective and scalable AI strategies,” Databricks said.
In 2023, the data analytics company opened new offices in Stockholm, Munich, and Zurich and now in Tel Aviv. The firm has over 9,000 clients worldwide, including companies such as Shell, AT&T and Comcast.
“Some of our fastest-growing customers in Europe, such as OpenWeb, are based in Israel and we’re committed to supporting them as they transform their businesses with data and AI,” said Yannis Daubin, Vice President for SEMEA (Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa) at Databricks. “We’re also working with partners such as KPMG Israel, and boutique system integrators, such as MatrixDnA and Aztek, to drive lakehouse adoption across Israel’s most data-forward companies.”
“The opportunity in Israel and across all of SEMEA is huge,” Daubin added.
