TLDR: OpenAI and Databricks have announced a multi-year, $100 million partnership to integrate OpenAI’s advanced AI models, including GPT-5, directly into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. This collaboration aims to simplify the development, deployment, and scaling of AI agents for over 20,000 enterprise customers, enabling them to build production-ready AI applications on their governed data without complex data movement.
San Francisco, CA – September 25, 2025 – Artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI and data and AI leader Databricks today unveiled a significant multi-year partnership valued at $100 million. The strategic alliance is set to revolutionize how enterprises deploy AI agents by making OpenAI’s cutting-edge models, including the highly anticipated GPT-5, natively available within the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and its flagship AI product, Agent Bricks. This integration will extend to Databricks’ more than 20,000 customers across various cloud environments, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, in the near future.
The core objective of this collaboration is to streamline the journey from AI experimentation to full-scale production deployments for businesses. Enterprises often face challenges in leveraging advanced AI capabilities while adhering to stringent requirements for data security, accuracy, and governance. The partnership addresses these hurdles by allowing organizations to build, evaluate, and scale production-grade AI applications and agents directly on their governed enterprise data, eliminating the need for complex data copying or managing disparate tools.
OpenAI’s models will be tightly integrated with Databricks’ AI development environment, Agent Bricks. This platform will provide a unified ecosystem for developing, evaluating, and scaling AI agents—systems designed to perform tasks autonomously with minimal human oversight. Databricks customers will gain the ability to run large language models on their existing enterprise data, accessible via SQL or application programming interfaces (APIs), and deploy them securely at scale with built-in governance and observability controls.
Brad Lightcap, Chief Operating Officer at OpenAI, emphasized the strategic importance of the deal, stating, “Our partnership with Databricks brings our most advanced models to where secure enterprise data already lives, making it easier for businesses to experiment, deploy, and scale AI agents with real impact.” Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO of Databricks, echoed this sentiment, noting, “We’re seeing overwhelming demand from enterprise customers looking to build AI apps and agents on their data, tailored to their unique business needs. This partnership makes it easier for enterprises to securely leverage their data and OpenAI models at scale with best-in-class governance and performance.”
This alliance builds upon an existing relationship where OpenAI already utilizes Databricks’ infrastructure for processing AI data to enhance product performance and the ChatGPT experience. Databricks was also among the first to host gpt-oss, an OpenAI open-weight model. The deal is seen as a significant move for OpenAI in expanding the distribution of its models beyond its primary partner, Microsoft, and direct access.
Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, commented on the partnership, calling it a “win-win situation.” He added, “This partnership emancipates Databricks from the cloud providers who have already partnered with OpenAI – and takes a differentiator for the cloud vendors away. CxOs now have options on how to build their AI powered next-gen apps.”
Mastercard’s Chief AI and Data Officer, Greg Ulrich, highlighted the practical benefits for enterprises: “For any use case, AI agents come down to three things: quality, scale, and trust. This partnership between Databricks and OpenAI enables us to build on the strong foundations we’ve established with each firm and provides us the opportunity to build trusted AI agents that harness the latest OpenAI models—delivered with the speed, security and scale of the Databricks platform.”
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Databricks, recently valued at $100 billion after signing a term sheet for its Series K funding round, continues to expand its AI capabilities, having also integrated Google Cloud Gemini models and launched other AI-focused products like Mosaic Agent Bricks and Lakeflow Designer. The companies are set to host a virtual event, ‘The Future of AI: Build Agents That Work,’ on November 11 (AMER) and November 12 (APJ / EMEA) to discuss the future of AI and agent development.
