In recent years, Databricks has been working to attract more non-technical users to its products, and it views spreadsheet software as one path toward achieving that goal.

Databricks has announced the acquisition of Row Zero, a company founded five years ago. Row Zero is a competitor to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Excel, focusing on spreadsheet software designed for large-scale data analysis.

The deal is expected to help Databricks attract more non-technical users to Genie. Genie is a chatbot the company launched last summer that allows business analysts to ask questions and get answers from enterprise data. A person familiar with the matter said Genie's annual recurring revenue has surpassed $100 million, representing the total contract value for the next 12 months.

Row Zero was founded by former Amazon Web Services (AWS) executives. According to its website, its spreadsheet software is faster and more secure than Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Excel while remaining compatible with Excel. Since its founding, Row Zero has raised a total of $13 million, including a $10 million seed round led by IA Ventures in May last year. The specific terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Databricks' early customers were mainly data engineers and data scientists, and this acquisition shows the company is increasingly targeting ordinary business-side users. The move is bound to further intensify the already fierce competition between it and its main rival Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW).

Databricks announced in August that, based on sales data for the July quarter, its annualized revenue had surpassed $7 billion, an increase of more than 80% year over year. In the same month, Databricks completed a $5 billion funding round led by Coatue, reaching a post-money valuation of $190 billion.