Databricks has acquired Row Zero, a spreadsheet company founded by former Amazon Web Services and Tableau engineers, to bring a governed, live spreadsheet experience into Genie, its AI assistant for business teams.

The deal was announced on 25 September. Row Zero will plug into Genie Ontology, Unity Catalog and Unity Gateway, letting finance, operations, sales and marketing teams work inside a spreadsheet while staying connected to governed, live data. It will be available to Databricks customers across all major cloud providers.

The problem with ungoverned spreadsheets

Spreadsheets have stayed the most widely used analytics tool in business for four decades, according to Databricks, even as newer data platforms have emerged. That staying power comes with a cost: teams often export data into standalone spreadsheet files, sometimes called “spreadmarts,” that sit outside any governance framework. Databricks argues this has created one of the largest sets of ungoverned data pipelines inside the modern enterprise, a problem that gets riskier as AI agents start acting on that data directly.

Row Zero is built to close that gap. It connects spreadsheets directly to live, governed sources, so queries respect each user’s existing permissions, data refreshes automatically instead of relying on stale exports, and every action an AI agent takes inside the spreadsheet remains auditable.

“Genie is helping make every knowledge worker dramatically more productive and impactful. As more finance, operations, and go-to-market teams adopt Genie, incorporating a seamless spreadsheet experience is a must-have,” said Patrick Wendell, co-founder and vice-president of engineering at Databricks.

Familiar formulas, bigger datasets

Row Zero is designed to feel like the spreadsheets teams already use, supporting the formulas, pivot tables and keyboard shortcuts familiar to Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets users. Its processing engine is built to handle far larger datasets than a typical desktop spreadsheet, with Databricks saying business users will be able to work with billions of rows at interactive speed.

“We built Row Zero because we love spreadsheets but recognised they needed to seamlessly connect to enterprise-scale data with governance and security at the core. Joining Databricks accelerates our vision of giving business users the spreadsheet they deserve,” said Breck Fresen, founder and chief executive of Row Zero.

Row Zero will continue to support data sources beyond Databricks once it is folded into Genie. Databricks says more than 20,000 organisations, including Unilever, Mastercard and AT&T, use its Data and AI platform.