Databricks' serverless database slashes app development from months to days as companies prep for agentic AI

Five years ago, Databricks coined the term 'data lakehouse' to describe a new type of data architecture that combines a data lake with a data warehouse. That term and data architecture are now commonplace across the data industry for analytics workloads.

Now, Databricks is once again looking to create a new category with its Lakebase service, now generally available today. While the data lakehouse construct deals with OLAP (online analytical processing) databases, Lakebase is all about OLTP (online transaction processing) and operational databases. The Lakebase service has been in development since June 2025 and is based on technology Databricks gained via its acquisition of PostgreSQL database provider Neon. It was further enhanced in October of 2025 with the acquisition of Mooncake, which brought capabilities to help bridge PostgreSQL with lakehouse data formats.

Lakebase is a serverless operational database that represents a fundamental rethinking of how databases work in the age ...