Databricks has announced the acquisition of Okera, an AI-focused data governance platform. The purchase price has not been disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Okera raised around $30 million from investors such as Felicis, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cyber Mentor Fund, ClearSky and Emergent Ventures.
Data governance was already an important issue, but the added focus on Artificial Intelligence has brought forward some of the weaknesses of the previous approaches to data governance. According to Databricks, a static control layer would no longer be sufficient in the age of large language models as the number of assets grows at a rapid pace due to machine-generated results, and simply managing access control is not enough to keep up with the fast-changing Artificial Intelligence landscape.
That is where Okera comes in. The platform uses AI-powered systems to automatically identify and classify any personally identifiable information, and apply rules without any coding effort. It is important to note that the other main reason Databricks bought Okera was its isolation technology. This technology is still in a secret preview mode, but it allows data governance control with minimal resource consumption.
On top of all this, Databricks plans to integrate Okera’s technology into its Unity Catalog, a governance solution for data and Artificial Intelligence assets. In addition, Databricks aims to bring Okera’s APIs to the market, which will be available to its data governance partners.
What is more, Databricks is also acquiring Okera’s co-founder and CEO Nong Li. He created the Apache Parquet file format and worked as an engineer at Cloudera and Databricks in the past before his appointment as the founding CTO of Okera and then its CEO in February 2022. Li said that “many enterprises do not have the technical resources to manage access policies at scale”, emphasizing the importance of Okera’s AI-driven approach to data governance.
Databricks is a data and Artificial Intelligence platform founded in 2013. It lets data professionals use machine learning, AI, and data analytics tools to design and implement their own data-driven solutions. It offers tools for data engineering, machine learning, and data analysis and is used by companies all over the world.
Nong Li is the co-founder and CEO of Okera. With a strong technical background, he was the brains behind the Apache Parquet file format as well as a former engineer at Cloudera and Databricks. He was also the CTO at Okera where he developed a modern, AI-centric governance solution. He is now looking forward to joining the team at Databricks.
