How Databricks Is Reshaping Japan’s Data Landscape

For years, companies had to choose between the flexibility of a data lake or the performance of a data warehouse. While both had their own advantages, there was no perfect choice – either weak governance or bad scalability.

That’s the idea behind the Databricks “Lakehouse”: a single venue where data engineering, analytics and AI co-exist in harmony: properly governed, with teams working seamlessly alongside.

In Japan, adoption is starting to look structural.

Toyota built “vista” on Databricks – a unified data and AI hub connecting corporate, connected-car and customer data company-wide. MUFG Bank, the largest megabank in Japan, chose Databricks as its next-generation data and AI platform. SoftBank launched enterprise data consulting services built on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

Little wonder therefore that Databricks reported 100%+ YOY growth in Japan for the fiscal year ending January 2024. Named customers include SoftBank, Nikkei, ANA, Bridgestone, AEON, Konica Minolta, Tokio Marine and many more. In January 2026 meanwhile, achieving ISMAP certification has paved the way for Japanese public sector procurement.
So what is the secret behind its success?

Well for one, old handovers become a thing of the past. Within the Databricks ecosystem, Engineering, BI and data science work side by side on the same governed data. The Lakehouse architecture delivers warehouse-grade performance, while retaining all the flexibility of data lakes. Multi-cloud support across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud means real portability. And managed infrastructure frees teams from maintaining complex distributed systems themselves.

Founded by the creators of Apache Spark, Databricks kept solving the right problems at the right time. Delta Lake for reliable pipelines. MLflow for the machine learning lifecycle. Unity Catalog for governance at scale. And now Genie, a conversational AI assistant that lets any employee query their data in natural language.

Just days ago, Databricks announced that it had exceeded a $5.4B revenue run-rate, growing 65%+ year-on-year, with over 800 customers spending more than $1M annually. Valued at $134B and with the Data+AI Summit 2026 in San Francisco looming up this June, the momentum is tangible.

As a global Databricks DPP professional service and training partner, we are proud to be part of this journey.