Amazon acquires DuckLabs, the team behind open-source database DuckDB
What's the deal? Amazon has signed a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the Amsterdam-based company behind DuckDB, the open-source analytical database that developers use to query large datasets without a cloud data warehouse. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in early September.
Who stays and what changes? DuckLabs' team of more than 30 will join Amazon Web ServicesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, remaining in Amsterdam. Co-founders and DuckDB creators Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will continue leading the team and setting the project's technical direction.
What about the open-source project? Amazon says it is not acquiring the DuckDB project itself. DuckDB, DuckLake, and Quack will remain free and open source under the MIT license, overseen by the nonprofit DuckDB FoundationDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. DuckLabs reports more than one million downloads a day.
What's the strategic rationale? The deal fits Amazon's push to turn S3, its cloud storage service, into a place where customers analyze data rather than just store it. AWS and DuckLabs have worked together since 2024, including on DuckDB support for Amazon's S3 Tables and SageMaker Lakehouse.
Why now? The data industry is shifting toward keeping information in open formats in cloud storage, where it can be queried directly rather than loaded into a separate warehouse. AI has raised the stakes, driving up both the volume of data companies keep and the cost of analyzing it.
Amazon frames DuckDB as a fit for AI agents, which query data by experimenting with small sets. "DuckDB ends up being naturally optimized for AI agents to use," wrote Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, the AWS vice president who leads its cloud data services.
What could go wrong? MotherDuck, a Seattle startup that sells a cloud service built on DuckDB, sees a familiar move. "That's Amazon's playbook, after all: wait until an open source project gets big enough, then launch it as a service," wrote chief executive officer Jordan Tigani. He still expects the deal to benefit DuckDB, since a healthy project drives more compute onto Amazon's infrastructure.
The signal: The acquisition puts pressure on Snowflake and Databricks, which sell the compute and governance layer on top of stored data and remain major AWS partners as well as competitors. By owning the team behind a widely used query engine, Amazon strengthens its position as the industry moves toward analyzing data directly in cloud storage.
Read more: geekwire.com, ducklabs.com, aboutamazon.com
Image credit: Amazon
