The most popular database most developers never install is getting absorbed into the biggest cloud on earth. AWS has struck an agreement to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind DuckDB, with a closing expected as soon as next month.
DuckDB is an embeddable analytical database often described as the analytics equivalent of SQLite. Developers embed it directly inside applications to run complex SQL queries without managing server infrastructure, which helped drive adoption past three million downloads a day at its peak.
AWS promised the project’s fans it will not be locked down: DuckDB stays under its permissive MIT license, the DuckLake and Quack companion projects remain free, and the independent nonprofit DuckDB Foundation keeps its role as steward. DuckLabs’ engineers, led by co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, stay in Amsterdam and focus on scaling DuckDB’s data services globally.
Co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will keep the core engineering team based in Amsterdam.
The move gives AWS a strong foothold in the embeddable-analytics niche, where startups and enterprises increasingly want query engines that live inside their products rather than in separate warehouses. For DuckDB users, the open question is whether a cloud giant will ever steer the project’s roadmap; AWS’s pledge of openness is the first answer.
