Databricks rolls out Astra to all roughly 3,500 engineers

Databricks announced on September 16, 2026, that it had rolled out Astra to all roughly 3,500 engineers following a pilot with around 200 users. The announcement reports stronger performance than Opus 5 and Sol 5.6 on highly complex tasks, especially high-level system design, but says meaningful improvement on medium- or low-complexity coding tasks remained unclear. Engineers given Astra increased overall coding spend by around 60% versus baseline. To encourage selective use, the announcement says engineers get an Astra-specific sub-budget, with lower-cost models preferred for everyday tasks. It also says Databricks lacked robust comparisons with Fable because data-retention policies had kept that model from being rolled out widely.