Fox Corporation Selects Databricks as Strategic Partner for Next-Generation Data and AI Platform

Summary:

• Fox Corporation and Databricks announce a multi-year partnership, naming Databricks as Fox’s data + AI platform 
• FOX is using Databricks Lakebase, Genie Code, Unity Gateway, and Genie Ontology to build AI apps and agents across sports, streaming, and more
• FOX built its Sports AI agent on Lakebase to deepen fan engagement by delivering relevant experiences during major live sporting events 

Databricks, a data and AI company, and Fox Corporation announced a multi-year strategic partnership naming Databricks as FOX’s platform of choice for data, AI applications, and agents.Together, Databricks products enable Fox to build and deploy agentic apps that deepen viewer and fan engagement by delivering more relevant content and sharing real-time insights on live programming through a natural conversational interface. 

With Databricks, FOX unifies data and AI on a platform that provides the necessary context for smarter content decisions and powers the next generation of fan experiences. Fox is transforming its end-to-end operations on Databricks, leveraging Lakebase, its serverless Postgres database built for AI agents, Genie Code, its AI agent for data engineering, ML, and AI workflows, Unity Gateway, which provides multi-AI governance and cost controls, and Genie Ontology, a context layer of organizational knowledge including data, docs, tags, content, apps, documents, and people.

“Databricks is core to FOX’s AI initiatives,” said Melody Hildebrandt, CTO, Fox Corporation. “The Databricks Data + AI Platform gives us a trusted foundation to build and scale AI across our business, with capabilities like Genie and Lakebase powering everything from natural-language analytics that improve employee productivity to AI agents that enhance fan experiences.”

“If you want to win with AI, you have to treat it as the foundation of your business, not a tool for one-off tasks,” said Andy Kofoid, president, global field operations, Databricks. “FOX understands this. With the Databricks Data + AI Platform, they’ve transformed how they run their business, reimagining everything from how they connect with fans and make streaming more relevant, to how their employees get work done.”

Real-Time Fan Engagement and More Relevant Streaming with Databricks Lakebase
Built on Lakebase using the Databricks AI Agent Framework, FOX Sports AI transforms how fans engage with live sports during major sporting events by delivering game predictions, player comparisons, historical context, breaking news, live Excitement Scores, and social sentiment Vibe Checks. Grounded in FOX Sports’ content library and authorized real-time sports data, the AI agent relies on Databricks to handle viewer queries, identify intent, and generate more relevant responses to optimize the fan experience. As a result, fans who leverage Sports AI spend an average of twice as much time on the FOX Sports app. What’s more, with Unity Gateway, every request on Sports AI runs through a single control plane with multi-AI cost guardrails, rate limits, model fallbacks, and cost attribution by project, on infrastructure already owned by FOX. 

The FOX One streaming service uses Lakebase-powered ML to recommend live and on-demand television content in under 200 milliseconds, driving deeper user engagement and reducing subscriber churn. Governed through robust CI/CD pipelines using Declarative Automation Bundles, FOX can continuously deploy and refine results while maintaining low-latency performance at production scale.

FOX Accelerating Data and AI Development with Genie Code 
Using Genie Code, FOX teams across product and engineering can easily build data pipelines, debug failures, and ship dashboards faster, helping them move from idea to production. With built-in context powered by Genie Ontology, FOX ensures new products and apps are built with the high levels of accuracy and governance required for production environments.