Databricks will invest more than $500 million in the Netherlands over the next three years. The company is expanding its largest European R&D hub in Amsterdam, plans to double its local team, and is moving into a new office in The Rock. It also aims to train more than 40,000 people in data and AI by 2030.
The new office spans 13,000 square meters and occupies eleven floors in Amsterdam’s The Rock tower. According to Databricks, the expansion is needed because of growing demand for Lakebase, Genie, and Unity Gateway. Clients such as ABN AMRO, AkzoNobel, Heineken, PostNL, Shell, and UMC Utrecht are already scaling up their data and AI projects using the platform.
“The Netherlands has the ambition and strong AI talent pool to become one of Europe’s leading hubs for enterprise AI,” says Kevin Jonkergouw, RVP Benelux at Databricks. According to him, organizations in the Benelux are rapidly moving from AI pilots to production.
What Amsterdam is building
Engineering teams in Amsterdam are building core components of the Databricks Data + AI Platform. One example is Genie ZeroOps, an AI agent that monitors production workloads, investigates issues, and proposes solutions. Databricks Apps, which enables companies to build data and AI applications based on their own business context, also originates in part from the capital. In addition, a Developer Experience team is developing internal systems that allow Databricks engineers to work more efficiently with agents.
However, Databricks notes that a lack of expertise often slows AI scaling. The company therefore aims to train more than 40,000 people by 2030 at the latest, covering topics ranging from data engineering and analytics to machine learning and generative AI. Students and faculty at institutions such as Eindhoven University of Technology and The Hague University of Applied Sciences will gain access to Databricks Free Edition. Professionals can take free, self-paced digital training courses.
Context for agents
The problem Databricks aims to address: most AI agents still cannot provide accurate answers to simple questions about their own company. The necessary context is scattered across systems or resides in employees’ minds. That costs time and tokens.
Lakebase is a serverless Postgres database for AI apps and agents. The technology comes from Neon, the startup that Databricks acquired last year for approximately $1 billion. Unity Gateway acts as a control layer over multiple AI models, providing governance, routing, and cost management. Genie transforms business data into answers and actions, powered by Genie Ontology: a self-learning context layer based on existing definitions, metrics, and sources.
Tip: Databricks aims to grow further and is expanding in the Netherlands