Databricks to Acquire Neon for Serverless Postgres Tailored to AI Agents and Developers

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — May 15, 2025 — Databricks, a leader in Data and AI, has revealed its intent to acquire Neon, a pioneering serverless Postgres company. This move comes as the USD$100-billion-plus database market faces unprecedented disruption driven by AI. The acquisition aims to bolster Neon's database and developer experience for both existing and new customers.

Neon: A Serverless Foundation for AI and Developers

Neon's platform is uniquely designed to support AI agents, which are increasingly integral to modern development. Internal data shows that 80% of databases on Neon are provisioned automatically by AI agents, highlighting the rapid growth of agentic workloads. These workloads differ from human-driven patterns in three key ways:

1. Speed + Flexibility: Neon can spin up a fully isolated Postgres instance in 500 milliseconds or less, supporting instant branching and forking of both schema and data.
2. Cost Proportionality: Neon's separation of compute and storage ensures costs scale precisely with usage, making it ideal for ephemeral databases.
3. Open Source Ecosystem: Neon is 100% Postgres-compatible, leveraging the rich Postgres community and popular extensions.

Shared Vision for Innovation

Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks, emphasized the shift toward AI-native applications: "The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do. Neon proves it: four out of every five databases on their platform are spun up by code, not humans." The integration of Neon's serverless architecture with Databricks' Data Intelligence Platform will help developers build and deploy AI agent systems more efficiently, reducing bottlenecks and costs.

Nikita Shamgunov, CEO of Neon, expressed excitement about the acquisition: "With Databricks' support, we can accelerate our mission to build the best serverless Postgres for the cloud." Neon's team will join Databricks post-transaction, bringing deep expertise to continue serving its vibrant community.

Event and Regulatory Details

More details will be shared at the Data + AI Summit in San Francisco (June 9–12). The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

About Neon

Founded in 2021, Neon was created by experienced database engineers and Postgres contributors to build a serverless Postgres platform for developers at all scales.

About Databricks

Databricks serves over 10,000 organizations globally, including 60% of the Fortune 500, with its Data Intelligence Platform. The company was founded by the creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, and MLflow.