Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Databricks Serverless: Cost, Gotchas, and UX

  • Several commenters say Databricks is pushing “serverless” but not passing on cost savings; some report huge bills and use strict budget alerts.
  • Pain points mentioned: inability to persist DataFrames in serverless, Unity Catalog storage/mounting complexity across clouds, lack of per-job CPU/memory metrics, and cold starts of ~1 minute for some workloads.
  • Compared with Snowflake, Databricks is described as full of “you can’t do it that way” surprises and weaker JSON/Variant support.

What “Serverless Postgres” Means (Neon vs Managed PG)

  • Clarification that “serverless Postgres” in this context means separating compute from storage (often on S3), enabling elastic compute scaling and scale-to-zero, not just “managed Postgres.”
  • Neon is praised for fast, easy creation of many databases (e.g., per-tenant), branching via copy‑on‑write, and using standard Postgres with a custom storage layer while remaining ACID.
  • Some argue services like Supabase are “managed” but not truly serverless in this architectural sense, though others focus on the user-facing similarity.

Reactions to the Rumored Acquisition

  • Many Neon users are worried: fears of price hikes, strategic deprioritization, or outright shutdown, citing Databricks’ quick shutdown of bit.io after acquiring it.
  • Some say they already avoid vendor-specific Postgres extensions due to past migration pain and will stick to “plain Postgres” to keep exit options open.
  • Others note Neon is Apache 2–licensed but question whether it’s practically self-hostable without vendor support.

Views on Databricks’ Role and Strategy

  • Databricks is seen as aiming to be the one-stop enterprise data/AI platform: lakehouse, ETL, warehousing, AI tooling, plus now OLTP/serverless Postgres.
  • Opinions diverge: some see it as valuable R&D and trusted infra for enterprises that can’t build this in-house; others see it as an expensive, clunky “IBM-style” sales machine and market‑cornering acquirer (Iceberg/Tabular, bit.io, now Neon).

Serverless / Edge Databases: Hype vs Reality

  • Several developers report higher latency (2–3× or worse) and unpredictable spikes compared with a single managed Postgres in the same datacenter, calling edge/serverless “overhyped” or even a “scam” on cost and performance.
  • Counterpoints: serverless can be extremely convenient (fast setup, autoscaling, scale-to-zero), especially for small teams and low-traffic workloads; some are happy to trade raw efficiency for not having to run databases themselves.
  • A strong contingent argues most apps can run cheaply and simply on a single Postgres (or even SQLite) on a server, delaying complexity until truly necessary.

Market Context and M&A Climate

  • The $1B price is seen less as a revenue bet and more as a strategic move to neutralize competitors (including AWS Aurora Serverless) and solidify Databricks’ position.
  • Commenters note an uptick in big acquisitions as IPO markets remain tough, especially for 2021‑era, overvalued or “AI‑rebranded” startups.