01Why Databricks bought a spreadsheet. What Row Zero is, what’s promised, and our read on why.
02Describe an app, get an app. Genie App Builder and App Spaces reach Beta, and whether to try them now.
03What happened this week. Genie still bills software accounts, shared metrics, one setup for AI coding tools, and contracts into tables.
04From Brickster.ai: Our free Databricks quizzes are easier to use.
01
🧮 Why Databricks bought a spreadsheet
01 / THE LEAD
Why Databricks bought a spreadsheet
On September 24, Databricks said it had bought Row Zero, a cloud spreadsheet that connects straight to company data, to build into Genie, its AI assistant. The deal is done; the version inside Genie isn’t.
Most of the business still runs in a spreadsheet. Databricks’ own announcement agrees, and adds a newer worry: the AI helpers that companies are rolling out read those exported copies too, so nobody can say where the numbers came from or how reliable they are.
Row Zero works like Excel, with familiar formulas and pivot tables, but the numbers come from a different place. Instead of an exported file, it connects straight to the company’s data warehouse, the central store where the official, permission-controlled figures live. The numbers refresh from the warehouse, and results can be saved back to it as a new table. Neither side has said what Databricks paid.
The plan is a spreadsheet inside Genie: a business user asks a question in chat, then keeps working on the answer in a sheet, with the company’s data permissions still applied. There’s no launch date, only “in the near future”, and no price.
Every export adds to what Databricks calls “arguably the largest set of ungoverned data pipelines in the enterprise.”
Databricks, announcing the deal, September 24. In plain words: every export is one more copy nobody controls.
Our take on why Databricks needed it starts with what it already shipped for spreadsheet users this year: a Google Sheets connector that can save data back to Databricks, an Excel add-in that came out of testing this month, and Genie built into both since August. Genie One, the version of Genie built for business users, was launched for the same people: finance, sales and marketing teams. Databricks had already decided the business user’s home is the spreadsheet. It just didn’t own one.
The gap, consultant Donald Farmer told TechTarget, is what happens after the download: the add-ins control who gets the data, but once it’s in a file, that control ends. Row Zero keeps the sheet connected to the source, so nobody needs a loose copy, and a company can block exports. Databricks’ own finance team was already pairing Row Zero with Genie, and Databricks now calls a spreadsheet a must-have for Genie. To us it’s the piece that was missing from a plan Databricks has built all year, though it hasn’t said so.
What it means for you
Business teams: nothing changes yet. The Excel add-in and the Google Sheets connector stay, Databricks says.
Data leads: list the spreadsheet exports your team feeds by hand today. That’s where a sheet that stays connected to the source would pay off first. If you pay for a separate spreadsheet-style tool such as Sigma, compare the two once this ships.
Row Zero customers: you’ve been told the standalone product stays, with the same free and paid plans. That’s a promise, not a contract: Row Zero’s standard terms let it end a subscription on 30 days’ notice, so ask in writing how long it lasts.
Verdict: A sensible buy that fixes the weakest link in Databricks’ plan for business users. You can prepare now, but you can’t plan the Genie rollout until there’s a date and a price.
Databricks now lets business people build small internal apps on company data by describing them in plain words. It’s free for now, while it’s in Beta, Databricks’ early-testing stage. Genie App Builder shows you a working version, you ask for changes, and then you publish it. It reached Beta on September 23 together with App Spaces.
Every app lives in an App Space, a fenced area an admin sets up once to decide who can build, what the apps may touch and how their costs are tracked. An app can act as the person using it. When it does, it only shows data they’re already allowed to see.
The catch is the word Beta: Databricks says Beta features aren’t meant for everyday business use and come with no service guarantee. Apps sleep when idle, and anything they haven’t saved to a database or file store is gone when they wake. They also can’t reach the open internet, so build on what’s already in Databricks. App Builder runs only on AWS and Azure, in some regions, and Databricks hasn’t said when Beta ends or what it will cost after.
Our advice: pilot one low-stakes tool while it’s free, and build nothing people rely on until it’s out of Beta and has a price.
A Databricks admin switches it on from the previews page. It also needs a setting called partner-powered AI features, which lets Databricks use models from partners such as OpenAI and Anthropic. It’s on by default unless your Databricks setup runs the stricter compliance security profile. If yours is off and you want App Builder, your admin can turn it on before November 1; after that, only your Databricks account team can change it.
Four updates from the past week, and why your team might care.
COST
Genie still bills questions asked by software
Genie questions asked through a service principal, the account software signs in with instead of a person, are billed at the standard rate with no free allowance, Databricks confirmed last week. People asking Genie One or Genie Agents themselves stay free through January 31, 2027. If Genie sits behind an app or an automated job, check which account it uses.
Companies can now share metric views, the agreed definitions of figures such as revenue or churn, with partners through OpenSharing, Databricks’ way of passing data between organizations. Both sides then calculate the number the same way, so fewer “your figure doesn’t match ours” calls. The catch: the partner must be on Databricks too, and metrics built on tables that hide some rows or columns from some people can’t be shared.
One setup for your company’s AI coding assistants (Beta)
Unity Gateway, Databricks’ control point for AI models and tools, now lets admins set up coding assistants such as Claude Code or Codex in one place: which ones are approved, which AI models they use and what spending rules apply. Developers start with that setup using one command and can see their own spend. Once an admin switches it on, it’s one place to watch costs for every AI coding tool connected to it.
Genie Code can turn a pile of contracts into a table
Genie Code, Databricks’ AI coding assistant for developers and data teams, can now build an automated process that pulls the fields you need from PDFs such as contracts or invoices into a table. Give it the right answers for a sample of documents and it measures its own accuracy; it can also set doubtful results aside for a person to review. It isn’t free: Genie Code is billed past a monthly allowance, and reading the documents uses processing power you pay for.
Daily Brick, Practice and Exam prep are easier to use
Daily Brick is our free daily five-question Databricks quiz; Practice and Exam prep hold the longer sets. The next question now scrolls into view, answers are spelled out as “You picked B. The answer is C.”, and a countdown shows when tomorrow’s quiz lands in your time zone. On a phone, buttons are easier to tap and no longer hide behind the bottom menu.
