Microsoft and Databricks Extend Their Partnership Into the 2030s and Push Genie Into Microsoft 365, Teams, Copilot and Power BI
Announced July 23 by both companies, the expanded deal runs into the 2030s: Databricks will run its own core business operations and analytics on Azure Databricks, expand from Azure Cobalt 100 to Cobalt 200 (up to 50% better performance, memory encryption on by default) for agentic workloads, and Microsoft will integrate Genie, Genie Ontology and the Unity AI Gateway across Entra, OneLake, Power BI, Purview, Foundry, Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Teams and Copilot. Ali Ghodsi framed it as grounding agents in business knowledge while 'controlling costs and ensuring governance'; Databricks cites 20,000+ organizations and 70% of the Fortune 500. The structural read: the semantic/ontology layer is being positioned as the thing agents must rent, and Microsoft just agreed to distribute a competitor's version of it inside its own apps.
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