Databricks is acquiring Row Zero, a cloud-based spreadsheet that works directly on live business data. The technology will become part of Genie, Databricks’ AI assistant. This will give finance, sales, and operations teams a familiar spreadsheet interface on top of governed data.
The spreadsheet is built for collaboration between people and AI agents. Row Zero works with Genie, the conversational AI layer that lets business teams ask questions about their data. For example, Genie can analyze why margins changed or draft a document about opportunities in the sales pipeline. With Row Zero, users can model and visualize data in a spreadsheet interface. Everything runs on a governed foundation of Genie Ontology, Unity Catalog, and Unity Gateway.
According to Databricks, that’s exactly where the problem lies. After four decades, spreadsheets remain the most widely used analysis tool in the business world, but teams export data to separate files (spreadmarts) outside any oversight. According to the company, each export adds an additional uncontrolled data pipeline. AI agents working on those files then process sensitive data of unknown origin.
Excel-compatible, billions of rows
Row Zero is designed to complement Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, featuring the same formulas, pivot tables, and keyboard shortcuts. Queries respect each user’s permissions, data refreshes automatically from the source, and exports can be disabled. Results can also be written to a file. According to Databricks, the underlying engine processes billions of rows at interactive speeds.
The integration between the two companies has actually been in place for some time. Row Zero previously integrated with Databricks SQL Warehouses and Genie, allowing users to ask questions in natural language and receive the answer in a linked spreadsheet.
“We built Row Zero because we love spreadsheets but recognized they needed to seamlessly connect to enterprise-scale data with governance and security at the core,” says Breck Fresen, founder and CEO of Row Zero.
The team behind Row Zero consists of former AWS and Tableau engineers and is fully transitioning to Databricks. Row Zero will be available to all Databricks users on the major clouds and will continue to support data sources outside of Databricks.
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