Databricks, Snowflake & The AI Database War

Every piece of software that has ever existed depends on a database. Not most software. All of it. When you buy something online, a database records the transaction and decrements the inventory count. When you log into an app, a database checks your credentials.

When a hospital records your diagnosis, when a bank processes your transfer, when a logistics company routes a package, a database is what makes the state of the world persistent and consistent. Software without a database is a calculator. It computes but remembers nothing.

In the last few days, I’ve given you a view of where this is going next, and it’s not just a passing change; it’s structural.

This is why databases are the most lucrative, most defensible, and most difficult-to-displace category in enterprise software. The reason database vendors have historically commanded extraordinary multiples is not that their software is beautiful — it is that their software is load-bearing. Migrating a production database is one of the most feared projects in any engineering organization. The data is the business. The database that holds it becomes, over time, nearly impossible to remove.