OceanBase, the database company backed by Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, is in talks to raise between 2 billion and 3 billion yuan (approximately $295 million to $443 million) in a Series A funding round, according to Bloomberg. The Beijing-based firm intends to use the capital to expand its artificial intelligence database services and strengthen its independent operations.
The proposed funding will support products that connect enterprise data with AI models and agents, covering structured records, documents, videos, and other unstructured data. OceanBase also aims to enhance tools for real-time business analysis. In June, the company launched an AI Database portfolio built on its LakeBase architecture, which unifies transaction processing, analytics, and multimodal data management. The platform supports vector data for AI search and retrieval, positioning it as a shared data layer for enterprise AI applications.
OceanBase recorded over $200 million in annualized revenue in 2026, a 70% increase from the previous year. While most of its thousands of customers operate in China—including ICBC and China Mobile—the company is expanding across Southeast Asia, Japan, India, and Latin America. It views Databricks as a benchmark and competes with Huawei, Tencent, and other database providers in China.
According to IDC, OceanBase ranked first in China’s on-premises distributed transaction database market in the first half of 2025, generating $28.1 million in that segment. The company originated as an internal database project at Ant Group in 2010, later becoming a commercial business. It formed an independent board and established an employee share-based rewards program in 2024, preparing for a potential separation from Ant Group. Ant Digital Technologies, another Ant Group unit, is also exploring a separate fundraising process.
