Databricks rolls out Astra to all engineers, reports 60% higher coding spend

Databricks rolled out Astra to every engineer, about 3,500 people, after a pilot with around 200 users. Engineers given Astra increased coding spend by roughly 60% compared to baseline.

The company reports Astra outperforms Opus 5 and Sol 5.6 on highly complex system design tasks, but sees no clear gain on medium or low complexity coding. Astra gets a separate sub-budget in Unity Gateway to encourage selective use.