‘Fight fire with fire’: Databricks is buying Panther Labs to challenge Splunk and CrowdStrike with AI

Databricks has a new pitch for the AI age of cyberattacks: fight fire with fire.

The $134bn data-and-AI company said it will buy Panther Labs, a cybersecurity startup, as it pushes deeper into a market dominated by Splunk and CrowdStrike. It is Databricks’ third security acquisition, a sign of how seriously it is taking the business. The companies did not disclose the price.

Defend with agents

The logic is simple, if alarming. AI has slashed the time attackers need to find and exploit a software flaw. Attackers now use AI to hunt for weaknesses across cloud and SaaS systems faster than human defenders can respond.

“If they’re going to attack you with agents, you have to defend with agents,” Databricks chief executive Ali Ghodsi told Reuters. The old way of managing security alerts, he said, is “dead”.

Panther is built for that fight. It pulls a company’s security data into one place so AI agents can triage alerts and investigate threats automatically. It already defends AI-native environments, part of a wider rush to secure the swarm of AI agents inside big companies. Anthropic is a customer.

Killing the SIEM

Databricks calls the result a “security lakehouse”, and the target is explicit: the legacy SIEM, the security-monitoring software that Splunk and others have sold for years. Databricks launched its own version, Lakewatch, in March. Panther adds a ready-made platform and a team that has spent years building cloud-native threat detection.

The deal also fits a pattern. Databricks is buying its way into one vertical after another, and security is the latest. Panther follows two earlier security buys, Antimatter and SiftD.ai.

The one that got away, until now

There is a backstory. Ghodsi says he met Panther’s founder, Jack Naglieri, in 2021, took him to dinner, and pitched an acquisition. Naglieri said no and kept building. “That was a good idea for him,” Ghodsi said, “because his valuation has been going up since then.”

Panther was last valued at $1.4bn, after a $120mn round in 2021, though that figure is not the price Databricks is paying now. Five years on, with its own valuation soaring and an IPO in view, Databricks finally got its yes. The deal is still subject to regulatory clearance.

Published June 19, 2026 - 11:12 am UTC

Back to top