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Databricks, the analytics and AI giant, has acquired data management company Tabular for an undisclosed sum. (CNBC reports that Databricks paid<\/a> over $1 billion.)<\/p>\n According<\/a> to Tabular co-founder Ryan Blue, he and Tabular\u2019s other two co-founders, Daniel Weeks and Jason Reid, will be joining Databricks in some capacity. There, they\u2019ll work to unify Tabular\u2019s and Databrick\u2019s customer bases and communities. <\/p>\n \u201cJoining Databricks means that there will be more contributions from our new colleagues,\u201d Blue writes in a blog post. \u201cWhile doing this, we assure that our approach to [our community] is not changing.\u201d<\/p>\n Tabular, which was founded by Blue, Weeks and Reid in 2021, offers data management products built on Apache Iceberg, a project Blue and Weeks developed while at Netflix and later donated to the Apache Software Foundation. Iceberg is an open source, high-performance format for databases that optimizes tables in databases for big data while at the same time allowing data engines to work with the tables.<\/p>\n Iceberg competed with Databricks\u2019 Delta Lake in the format wars for data lakehouses \u2014 data architectures built to store large amounts of raw data while providing structure and management functions.\u00a0While both Iceberg and Delta Lake use the Apache Parquet data storage format, they\u2019re incompatible in key aspects.<\/p>\n Soon, however, Delta Lake and Iceberg will converge into one. Databricks and Tabular are pledging to work toward a common standard in light of the acquisition news.<\/p>\n \u201c[We will be] working to improve Iceberg support throughout the Databricks platform,\u201d Blue said. \u201cOur goal is to improve interoperability so that you can take advantage of the amazing work of both communities and don\u2019t need to worry about the underlying format.\u201d<\/p>\n The market for data lakehouses is enormous \u2014 according<\/a> to MIT Tech Review, about 74% of organizations have one \u2014 and so, from Databricks\u2019 perspective, bringing Tabular into its corporate family was probably the clear choice. Fewer competing data lakehouse formats \u2014 or, alternatively, platforms with strong support for multiple formats \u2014 makes Databricks\u2019 platform more attractive to corporate clients, after all, even if those formats aren\u2019t vendor-proprietary.<\/p>\n