Innovation Meets Intelligence: Announcing the Winners of the Built-On Databricks Startup Challenge

After months of innovation, collaboration and competition, we are thrilled to unveil the winners Built-On Databricks Startup Challenge! This group of outstanding startups is redefining what’s possible on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. This year’s challenge brought together visionary founders and teams building the next generation of B2B applications, all leveraging the power of Databricks to deliver real-world impact.

🏆 Grand Prize Winner: RadiantGraph

RadiantGraph has been named the Grand Prize Winner of the Built-On Databricks Startup Challenge!

RadiantGraph is transforming healthcare engagement by empowering organizations to deliver highly personalized, AI-driven communications and interventions at scale. Their platform ingests and enriches tens of millions of member records, layering in social determinants of health, and uses advanced machine learning to identify high-risk groups and match them with the right clinical programs. By automating and personalizing outreach, RadiantGraph has helped clients achieve a 15.8% lift in enrollment and a 57% reduction in member outreach without loss in registration, directly improving clinical and business outcomes. RadiantGraph leverages Databricks to seamlessly integrate and unify complex, siloed healthcare data, enabling organizations to connect disparate data sources and rapidly deploy AI-driven personalization workflows within hours instead of months.

🥈 Second Place: Coactive

Coactive takes second place with their AI-powered content workflow platform, built natively on Databricks. By combining advanced search, automated metadata generation, and compliance automation, Coactive is transforming how enterprises manage and extract value from their visual content at scale. Coactive’s platform leverages Databricks Delta Live Tables and Structured Streaming to process large volumes of visual content, enabling organizations to accelerate content production, automate moderation, and seamlessly integrate with existing workflows for maximum business value.

🥉 Third Place: Opsera

Opsera secures third place for their DevOps for DataOps solution, which empowers organizations to streamline, secure, and scale data workflows using Databricks. Their platform delivers automation, governance, and intelligence, helping enterprises accelerate innovation while ensuring robust compliance and security. Opsera’s unified approach bridges DevOps and DataOps, offering comprehensive toolkits to automate deployment, orchestrate analytics, and enable AI/ML model management with security and compliance guardrails—making it easier for teams to deliver data-driven solutions faster and with greater confidence.

Honorable Mentions

We also want to recognize several exceptional startups that stood out during the competition:

• Prae: Prae impressed the judges with their innovative approach to operationalizing data intelligence to protect business leaders from malicious attacks.
• Panaptico: Panaptico showcased a compelling solution for managing and optimizing compute clusters, leveraging Databricks.
• Datanimbus: Datanimbus earned distinction for its validated, no-code ETL and AI orchestration product, helping organizations modernize and operationalize AI on Databricks.
• Scalata: Scalata demonstrated excellence in scalable data engineering and analytics applications for credit professionals built on the Databricks Platform.
• Upriver: Upriver was recognized for its creative use of Databricks to deliver actionable insights around data quality and reliability and drive business value.

The Road to Victory

The winners were announced at the Data + AI Summit in San Francisco on June 10th. Our distinguished panel of judges evaluated the startups based on their creativity, technical excellence and potential for real-world impact. Judges for the Challenge included Andy Kofoid (Databricks President of Global Field Operations), Adam Conway (Databricks SVP of Product), George Mathew (Managing Director, Insight Partners) and Sarah Catanzaro (General Partner, Amplify Partners).

In addition to passes to next year's Databricks Data and AI Summit, our Built-On Databricks Startup Challenge winners will receive:

• Grand Prize Winner (RadiantGraph):
  • Up to $600,000 in Databricks Ventures investment
  • $400,000 in Databricks credits
  • Breakout session at Data & AI Summit
• Second Place (Coactive):
  • $75,000 in Databricks credits
• Third Place (Opsera):
  • $25,000 in Databricks credits

We congratulate RadiantGraph, Coactive and Opsera for their exceptional achievements to date and look forward to seeing their continued growth and impact on the technology landscape.

Looking Ahead

The Built-On Databricks Startup Challenge is more than a competition—it’s a launchpad for the future of data intelligence. If you’re a startup building data-driven applications, don’t miss the opportunity to join the Databricks for Startups program. The program offers up to $50,000 in Databricks credits, technical guidance, go-to-market support, and access to a vibrant community of innovators—all designed to help you scale from seed to success. Learn more and apply today to accelerate your journey with Databricks!

Stay tuned for more updates and join us in celebrating these trailblazing startups as they continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with Databricks.