San Francisco-based Databricks, a global leader in data and AI, is opening its first Canadian research and development hub in Vancouver—bolstering Canada’s innovation economy and deepening its ties with some of the country’s largest enterprises.
The new Vancouver office joins an elite roster of Databricks R&D centres worldwide, including Silicon Valley, Seattle, Berlin, Bengaluru, and Amsterdam.
Led by local tech veteran Ken Wong—co-founder of Datajoy, acquired by Databricks in 2022—the site will initially focus on four key areas: the company’s AI-first business intelligence product (AI/BI), semantic modeling via Unity Catalog, Databricks Apps, and petabyte-scale real-time analytics.
Since the acquisition, Wong has led multiple strategic product initiatives at Databricks. He now takes the reins of building the local team and steering the company’s efforts to democratize data access through AI from Canada.
Wong cited Vancouver’s rich BI history, international talent pool, and proximity to other R&D hubs as key reasons for the expansion. He emphasized that while affordability didn’t hurt, the real constraint for Databricks is talent quality—and Vancouver meets that high bar.
“There’s a couple reasons why Vancouver is an obvious next place,” Wong told Techcouver. “One, there’s a diaspora of business intelligence expertise from Crystal Decisions. Two, we’ve got proximity to our R&D centers in Seattle and the Bay Area. And three, there’s a global talent pool that already exists here.”
Databricks already serves many of Canada’s largest enterprises, including Air Canada, Lululemon, Rogers, TD Bank, CBC, the Bank of Canada, and Alimentation Couche-Tard. With the new Vancouver office, the company plans to expand its Canadian presence from sales and customer support to core product development and engineering.
The announcement comes amid a period of rapid global growth for Databricks. The company now supports more than 15,000 customers—including over 60% of the Fortune 500—and is on track to generate $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July 2025, reflecting 50% year-over-year growth.
Backed by a $62 billion valuation following its $15 billion Series J round, Databricks recently acquired serverless Postgres startup Neon to accelerate AI infrastructure for developers. It has also deepened partnerships with Microsoft, Google Cloud, SAP, and AI safety leader Anthropic.
Databricks’ investment in Vancouver reinforces the city’s rising status as a hub for AI and enterprise software. The company now operates 30+ offices across 20+ countries.
Two of Databricks’ co-founders have Canadian roots: Chief Architect Reynold Xin is a University of Toronto alum, and Chief Technologist Matei Zaharia grew up in Toronto and studied at the University of Waterloo.
Databricks is a “rocketship” by almost any measure. It is one of the most anticipated IPO prospects and has been accelerating in growth as a result of the data + AI wave. As a proof point, Wong shared that during the two years he led product for Databricks SQL, the product grew from $100M ARR and is on track to reach $1B ARR by January 2026 (USD).
Databricks has hundreds of employees in Canada and anticipates growing more in the months ahead.
To celebrate the launch, Databricks is hosting an exclusive networking event in Vancouver on Thursday, August 21. Attendees will have the chance to meet Reynold Xin, co-founder of Databricks, along with Ken Wong and other members of the founding team at the Vancouver site. If you’re interested in attending, register here. (Please note that space is limited — registrations will be reviewed and confirmed individually.)
Yay!