Amazon agrees to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind open-source database DuckDB, for an undisclosed sum; DuckDB will remain open source (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
Amazon has agreed to acquire DuckLabs, the company behind DuckDB, the fast-growing open-source database that has become a favorite …
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acquired DuckLabs, the company responsible for the widely-used open-source DuckDB in-process OLAP database. The financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed. DuckLabs, founded by the creators of DuckDB, will now operate under AWS.
The in-process OLAP database, written in C++, can operate within a host process without requiring separate DBMS server software installation, update, or maintenance. For instance, the Python package associated with DuckDB can execute queries directly on data in the Python Pandas library, without the need to import or copy the data.
DuckDB, developed by academics at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, made its public debut in 2022 and has since garnered a significant following among developers and analytics users. It reached its first stable release, version 1.0, in 2024 and has since expanded into data lakes through DuckLake, which utilizes DuckDB for metadata storage to address the "small changes" challenge faced by data lakes.
AWS has long been an admirer of DuckDB. In a previous interview with The Register, AWS vice president and distinguished engineer Andy Warfield expressed excitement over the DuckLake announcement, stating that the cloud giant's engineering team was "super excited" about it and that it had garnered considerable interest.
The AWS and DuckLabs teams have already collaborated on S3 Tables, announced by AWS in December 2024, to ensure first-class support for S3 Tables in DuckDB. The database itself is fully open source under the MIT License, although most contributions and strategic direction have been provided by DuckLabs. Post-merger, Hannes Mühleisen, DuckLabs co-founder and CEO, anticipates a broader role for the independent DuckDB Foundation in preventing potential conflicts of interest with other technology giants.
Mühleisen envisions the DuckDB Foundation evolving into a platform where stakeholders building upon DuckDB come together. The Foundation, currently led by Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, DuckLabs CTO and co-author of the database, is contemplating the establishment of a Technical Advisory Board to facilitate communication among those investing in DuckDB.
The Foundation, which has yet to finalize its governance structure and voting rights, aims to provide a mechanism for the community to play a more significant role in the project's development.
In a statement accompanying the merger, AWS's Warfield highlighted DuckDB's popularity and success, attributing much of its achievement to its open-source nature and ease of integration into various applications. With AWS's backing, Warfield expressed enthusiasm about helping the project achieve an even broader impact, emphasizing AWS's commitment to the continued open-source development of DuckDB under the stewardship of the DuckDB Foundation. The DuckLabs team will remain based in Amsterdam.
Written by urgent.news from The Register Software's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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