What is "databricks"

Databricks is a company founded by the creators of Apache Spark, that aims to help clients with cloud-based big data processing using Spark. Databricks grew out of the AMPLab project at University of California, Berkeley that was involved in making Apache Spark, a distributed computing framework built atop Scala. Its co-founders are: Ali Ghodsi, CEO, University of California, Berkeley adjunct professor and co-founder, Andy Konwinski, Ion Stoica, Executive Chairman, University of California, Berkeley professor and co-founder and CTO of Conviva, Patrick Wendell, Reynold Xin, Matei Zaharia, CTO, who created Apache Spark while a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a professor at the Stanford University.

In September 2013, Databricks announced that it had raised $13.9 million from Andreessen Horowitz and said it aimed to offer an alternative to Google's MapReduce system. In March 2014, Databricks certified Alpine Data Labs on Apache Spark. In June 2014, Databricks raised a $33 million Series B, led by New Enterprise Associates, along with additional investment from Series A investor Andreessen Horowitz. Databricks, founded by the team that created Spark, is closely involved with the development of Apache Spark, an open-source project incubated by the Apache Foundation.