Does Databricks have a business intelligence tool?

Summary

• Yes. Databricks has a native business intelligence product called AI/BI, built directly into the Databricks Data + AI Platform and governed by Unity Catalog.
• AI/BI has two parts that work together: AI/BI Dashboards for building interactive dashboards, and AI/BI Genie for asking questions of your data in everyday language.
• AI/BI Dashboards is a low-code tool that generates dashboards from natural-language descriptions, with more than 20 visualization types to choose from.
• AI/BI Genie is a generally available conversational interface that returns the SQL, charts, and summaries behind each answer, and it can be embedded in apps and agents through REST APIs.
• Because AI/BI queries live lakehouse data directly with no extracts, dashboards and questions run on current data at scale under one set of permissions and lineage.

Does Databricks have a business intelligence tool?

Yes. Databricks has a native business intelligence product called AI/BI, built directly into the Databricks Data + AI Platform. It has two parts that work together: AI/BI Dashboards for building interactive dashboards, and AI/BI Genie for asking questions of your data in plain language. Both are governed by Unity Catalog and run on live lakehouse data, so BI is part of the platform rather than a separate tool you bolt on and feed with copies.

What is Databricks AI/BI?

AI/BI is business intelligence that sits on the same platform as your data engineering, analytics, and AI. Because dashboards, transformations, governance, and models share one foundation, the numbers people see in a dashboard trace back to the same governed tables the data team maintains. There are no extracts and no separate reporting database to keep in sync. AI/BI uses AI throughout: it can generate a dashboard from a description, and it can answer a typed question with the query, chart, and explanation behind it.

What to look for in a business intelligence tool

The strongest BI tools do more than draw charts. These criteria help you judge any option:

Capability	Why it matters
Self-service for non-technical users	Executives and business users should get answers without waiting on an analyst or writing SQL.
Natural-language question answering	Ask in plain language and get an answer, a chart, and an explanation, rather than a static report.
Governance and lineage	Consistent permissions and traceability so everyone sees the same trusted numbers and admins can audit usage.
Live data at scale	Query current data directly, from small tables to very large ones, without extracts or sampling.
A shared semantic layer	Reusable metric definitions so dashboards, questions, and agents compute the same business metrics.
Easy, broad sharing	Distribute dashboards and answers across the organization without heavy setup.

How Databricks AI/BI works

AI/BI delivers on those criteria through two components, both governed by Unity Catalog.

• AI/BI Dashboards is a low-code dashboarding tool. You describe what you want in natural language and it generates the dashboard, with more than 20 visualization types to choose from. Dashboards run natively on the platform against SQL warehouses, so they scale to large datasets without sampling or extract limits.
• AI/BI Genie is the conversational interface. Business users ask questions in everyday language and get answers grounded in trusted data, along with the generated SQL, charts, and summaries, plus drivers, anomalies, and relationships surfaced automatically. Genie supports follow-up questions and improves from feedback and usage over time. AI/BI Genie is generally available, and it can be embedded into applications and agents through REST APIs.

Two design choices make the results trustworthy. First, AI/BI is governed by Unity Catalog, so permissions, security controls, and lineage apply consistently, and administrators can trace how a dashboard's data is used back to ingestion. Second, Unity Catalog metric views provide a SQL-based semantic layer that both dashboards and Genie read from, so a metric like "active customers" means the same thing everywhere. For the product vision, see BI built for the AI era and Introducing AI/BI.

Use cases

Self-service reporting. A business team builds and updates its own dashboards from natural-language prompts instead of filing tickets with a central analytics team.
Ad hoc questions. A manager preparing for a review asks Genie for this quarter's numbers by region and gets an answer with the query and chart behind it, then drills in with follow-ups.
Embedded analytics. A product team embeds Genie in an internal app through the REST API, so people ask questions where they already work.

FAQs

What is the name of Databricks' BI tool?

It is Databricks AI/BI, a native business intelligence product on the Databricks Data + AI Platform. It combines AI/BI Dashboards and AI/BI Genie, both governed by Unity Catalog.

What is the difference between AI/BI Dashboards and AI/BI Genie?

AI/BI Dashboards generate interactive, low-code dashboards from natural-language descriptions, with more than 20 visualization types. AI/BI Genie answers ad hoc questions in everyday language and returns the SQL, charts, and summaries behind the answer.

Does Databricks BI require moving data into a separate tool?

No. AI/BI queries governed lakehouse data directly with no copies or imports, running on SQL warehouses connected to Unity Catalog, so dashboards and Genie work on live data.

How is AI/BI governed?

Through Unity Catalog. Permissions, security controls, and lineage are applied consistently, and administrators can trace how data assets are used within AI/BI back to ingestion.

Can business users use it without technical skills?

Yes. AI/BI is built for self-service: describe a dashboard in natural language or ask Genie a question in everyday language, so people find answers without writing SQL.