On June 12, 2025, Databricks and Kyndryl announced major strategic partnerships and product launches that promise to accelerate AI and data modernization for enterprises worldwide. These moves come amid a surge in AI adoption and a growing demand for streamlined, scalable solutions that bridge legacy infrastructure with cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
Kyndryl, a global IT services leader, revealed a strategic alliance with Databricks aimed at helping organizations modernize their data platforms and scale AI across business operations. By combining Kyndryl's enterprise-grade IT services and consulting expertise with Databricks' Data Intelligence Platform, the partnership is designed to simplify complex legacy system modernization and enable AI capabilities in a cost-efficient and scalable manner.
Giovanni Carraro, Senior Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances at Kyndryl, emphasized the synergy: "Kyndryl's global partnership with Databricks further expands its global alliance ecosystem, which, combined with its end-to-end data, AI and modernization services, will continue to support customers' digital transformations and enable AI at scale." He added that Kyndryl will leverage proprietary assets such as the Kyndryl Data and AI Console and Generative AI Navigator to drive data modernization and AI adoption for joint customers.
The initial focus of this collaboration targets industries where legacy systems and fragmented data architectures have traditionally hindered digital transformation. Manufacturing, utilities, retail, travel, and transportation sectors are prioritized, as integrating operational technology, ERP, and cloud data environments in these fields can unlock critical insights and efficiencies. Kyndryl plans to scale Databricks adoption through a global delivery model supported by its team of data experts, offering dedicated services that help customers transition from traditional data environments to unified platforms powered by Databricks.
Meanwhile, Databricks itself announced a suite of innovations at its Data + AI Summit held in San Francisco during the week of June 10, 2025. Among the highlights was the launch of Databricks One, a new interface designed to democratize data-driven insights and AI across all business users, from executives to frontline employees in finance, marketing, and sales.
Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO of Databricks, explained the vision behind Databricks One: "Our mission at Databricks is to democratize data + AI. Every person of every skill level should have equal access to work with data and use AI." The platform features AI/BI dashboards that allow teams to explore visualizations and perform advanced analytics without writing code, including forecasting and key driver analysis.
Another standout feature is AI/BI Genie, a conversational assistant capable of answering natural language questions such as "Which region is growing the fastest?" or "Why did sales increase in April?" This assistant understands business-specific semantics and will soon support "Deep Research," revealing not only what happened but why and how. Additionally, Databricks Apps enable organizations to package complex workflows that combine analytics, AI, and transactional processing into custom applications, integrating different business processes into a single interface.
Databricks One builds on the existing Data Intelligence Platform, offering unified governance through Unity Catalog and no per-user license restrictions, facilitating easy scaling within organizations. The platform runs on Databricks' serverless compute infrastructure, designed to deliver interactive performance at enterprise scale. Currently, Databricks One is in private preview with a beta version slated for release later this summer, available at no additional cost to existing customers.
In a further strategic move, Databricks announced a new product partnership with Google Cloud to make Google's latest Gemini AI models available natively within the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. This collaboration allows organizations to build, deploy, and scale AI agents leveraging Gemini's advanced capabilities directly on their enterprise data, securely and with unified governance.
Google Gemini 2.5, including Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash, represents a significant milestone in AI reasoning and natural language understanding, excelling in complex multi-step decision making. Databricks customers gain access to these models through SQL queries and model endpoints, eliminating the need for data duplication or complex integrations. Payment for Gemini usage is integrated into Databricks contracts, simplifying procurement.
Ali Ghodsi highlighted the importance of this offering: "By using Google's Gemini models directly on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, organizations can build and scale AI agents tailored to their specific domains and data. Gemini is advancing at an impressive rate, and it's no surprise that enterprises everywhere are seeing value from these models." Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, added, "Our partnership with Databricks is another critical step in helping every enterprise transform their businesses with generative AI." He noted that this integration accelerates innovation by enabling sophisticated AI agents, automated data workflows, and predictive insights within a secure, governed environment.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi also shared insights in an interview with The Information, revealing that Databricks is pursuing a multi-cloud strategy to offer customers a variety of AI models from providers such as Google, Meta, and Mistral. This approach acknowledges that different tasks require different AI capabilities — from high-performance models for advanced coding to cost-effective options — and aims to simplify customers' AI adoption by eliminating manual setup steps. This strategy parallels moves by competitors like Snowflake, which recently partnered with Microsoft to offer OpenAI models.
The Databricks Data + AI Summit also showcased a burst of partner activity, with companies unveiling new products and expanded integrations to accelerate AI adoption, data governance, cloud optimization, and no-code acceleration. Informatica deepened its partnership with Databricks, becoming a launch partner for Managed Iceberg Tables and the new OLTP-optimized Lakebase database. These integrations help enterprises ingest, cleanse, govern, and transform Iceberg-format data at scale, supporting analytics and AI workloads.
Tredence was named Databricks' 2025 Growth Partner of the Year for the Americas, recognized for converting AI strategies into measurable business outcomes across sectors such as retail, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods. With over 600 Databricks-certified practitioners, Tredence supports enterprises in moving "from data complexity to clarity," according to Databricks.
Qlik introduced new integrations to enhance streaming real-time change data capture into Unity Catalog’s Uniform Tables and automated Apache Iceberg optimization via Qlik Open Lakehouse. Ariel Amster, Director of Strategic Technology Partners at Databricks, remarked, "By delivering real-time change data capture into UniForm tables and its native integration with Mosaic AI, Qlik is helping our joint customers simplify and accelerate innovation on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform." These updates improve governance, interoperability, and AI readiness for joint customers.
Indicium launched its AI Data Squads as a Service, a consulting model that pairs certified engineers with embedded AI agents to streamline complex migrations to Databricks. Daniel Avancini, Chief Data Officer at Indicium, explained, "AI can accelerate delivery, but the real value comes from combining automation with hands-on expertise and platform depth." These squads automate migration tasks while maintaining accuracy and speed.
Finally, Sedai announced the general availability of its Databricks Optimization solution, an autonomous cloud management platform that offers cost and performance tuning for Databricks workloads. Suresh Mathew, CEO of Sedai, stated, "AI is the only safe and efficient way to solve this problem at scale. That’s why we built the first autonomous cloud management platform that can safely optimize Databricks and the rest of your cloud services." Sedai's platform claims to save users 30% or more in cloud computing costs by monitoring cluster behavior and applying one-click optimizations.
Together, these announcements underscore a vibrant ecosystem around Databricks, reflecting the company's commitment to making AI and data intelligence more accessible, scalable, and integrated across industries. From Kyndryl's strategic alliance targeting legacy modernization to Google's Gemini models powering next-generation AI agents, and new tools democratizing data insights for every business user, the landscape of enterprise AI is rapidly evolving.
As organizations grapple with the challenges of fragmented data, complex legacy systems, and the rising demand for AI-driven decision making, these partnerships and innovations provide a roadmap for unlocking the full potential of data. The convergence of expert services, advanced AI models, and user-friendly platforms heralds a new era where AI is not just for data scientists but a tool empowering every corner of the enterprise.
