--- title: "Glean passed $300 million ARR, and ZoomInfo and Databricks are already ingesting its data" description: "In two weeks Glean opened agent building to outside coding tools, its CEO preached portable context, and ZoomInfo and Databricks started pulling its data onto their own rails. The seat that paid for the knowledge graph is no longer the only way to consume it." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Platforms" published: 2026-10-27T17:06:33.848Z modified: 2026-10-27T17:06:33.848Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/glean-passed-300-million-arr-and-zoominfo-and-databricks-are-already-ingesting-its-data language: en keywords: "Glean, AI Agents, Enterprise AI, Databricks, ZoomInfo" --- # Glean passed $300 million ARR, and ZoomInfo and Databricks are already ingesting its data > In two weeks Glean opened agent building to outside coding tools, its CEO preached portable context, and ZoomInfo and Databricks started pulling its data onto their own rails. The seat that paid for the knowledge graph is no longer the only way to consume it. [Glean](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/glean)'s seat business is being unbolted from both ends, and its own chief executive is doing some of the unbolting. On October 21 Glean [made headless agent building generally available](https://www.unite.ai/glean-adds-headless-agent-building-for-claude-code-cursor-and-codex/), letting a developer in Claude Code, Cursor or Codex write an agent as files and publish it to Glean's managed runtime, where it inherits the permissions and audit trail [1]. In the same fortnight, the platforms around Glean started treating it as a source to ingest rather than a seat to buy. The enterprise context layer Arvind Jain wants everyone to treat as a utility is exactly what Glean is trying to keep behind its own wall. ## The utility pitch and the wall are the same product The tension sits inside Glean's strategy, not between vendors. Jain, Glean's CEO, [told The Next Web that Glean has passed $300 million ARR](https://daily.dev/posts/glean-ceo-arvind-jain-says-he-wants-glean-to-be-easy-to-replace-lljuf0txl), prefers cheaper GPT models over Claude for most tasks, and wants agent memory kept portable so customers could swap Glean out [4]. That is the utility pitch. Yet the new headless builder only pays off the way Glean wants if the agent stays on Glean's runtime, where it inherits permissioned access across more than 275 enterprise sources; an agent that leaves inherits none of it [1]. Jain is selling a context layer while shipping [the permission wall that makes context hard to carry](https://theinference.org/article/samsara-opens-its-fleet-data-to-any-ai-agent-sap-keeps-agents-in-joule). ## The platforms are ingesting, not subscribing [ZoomInfo](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/zoominfo), the B2B data platform, is already pulling on its side: its GTM.AI headless context layer counts Glean among its integrations, and this month it shipped a ClickUp connector whose agents read live from a context graph holding more than 100 million companies and 500 million contacts [5]. [Databricks](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/databricks)' [Lakeflow Connect names Glean, alongside Confluence, Notion, SharePoint and Google Drive, as knowledge it ingests into Unity Catalog](https://www.databricks.com/blog/unify-your-productivity-and-ai-data-lakeflow-connect) to feed its own agents [2]. When your index is an input to ZoomInfo and Databricks, the seat stops being what customers pay for. ## Capability can be rented, so the moat has to be the runtime Glean bought capability to defend the layer: it trained a search model on Thinking Machines' Tinker, a fine-tuning API, that cut search latency in half and token use by a quarter [3]. Tinker's own momentum, [a $100 million run-rate and a mooted $1 billion round at a $40 billion-plus valuation](https://www.arr.club/signal/thinking-machines-100m-run-rate-tinker-oct-2026) [3], says the fine-tuning route to differentiated context is open to any buyer. That is the pressure on Glean's moat. The listed expression is ZoomInfo (GTM): it sells its headless context layer into [Salesforce](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/salesforce), [HubSpot](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/hubspot) and [Microsoft](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/microsoft) seats, and it reads Glean, not the reverse. No raise or IPO is planned, so a secondary print is where any Glean mark lands. Our call: Glean's next mark should be priced as a data business with a contested runtime, not a seat-software compounder. *Chart: **The listed context-layer trade has gone sideways: ZoomInfo revenue, twelve flat quarters** Line chart of ZoomInfo's quarterly revenue from Q3 2023 to Q2 2026, hovering between about $292 million and $319 million with no sustained growth.* *ZoomInfo's quarterly revenue in US dollars, as reported in its SEC filings, Q3 2023 through Q2 2026. Year-over-year growth stayed in single digits in every quarter of the period. Source: company_series [6]. [6]* ## Takeaway Glean crossed $300 million ARR selling seats on its knowledge graph, but ZoomInfo and Databricks now ingest that graph, and its own CEO preaches replaceability. The moat left to defend is the permissioned runtime, not the index. ## Sources 1. [Unite.AI, Glean Adds Headless Agent Building for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex, 22 October 2026](https://www.unite.ai/glean-adds-headless-agent-building-for-claude-code-cursor-and-codex/) 2. [Databricks blog, Unify your productivity and AI data with Lakeflow Connect, 27 October 2026](https://www.databricks.com/blog/unify-your-productivity-and-ai-data-lakeflow-connect) 3. [ARR Club, Thinking Machines Lab surpassed $100M revenue run-rate on Tinker, October 2026](https://www.arr.club/signal/thinking-machines-100m-run-rate-tinker-oct-2026) 4. [daily.dev / The Next Web, Glean CEO Arvind Jain says he wants Glean to be easy to replace, 15 October 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/glean-ceo-arvind-jain-says-he-wants-glean-to-be-easy-to-replace-lljuf0txl) 5. [ZoomInfo press release, ZoomInfo Launches Native ClickUp Integration Through GTM.AI, 9 October 2026](https://www.zoominfo.com/newsroom/press-releases/zoominfo-launches-native-clickup-integration) 6. [ZoomInfo, quarterly figures from its SEC filings, retrieved 27 October 2026](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001794515) --- Glean passed $300 million ARR, and ZoomInfo and Databricks are already ingesting its data — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/glean-passed-300-million-arr-and-zoominfo-and-databricks-are-already-ingesting-its-data