AWS buys DuckLabs to bring DuckDB’s embeddable analytics to more enterprises

BIG DATA

Amazon Web Services Inc. said today it has struck an agreement to buy DuckLabs B.V., the Amsterdam-based developer behind the popular open-source analytical database, DuckDB.

The deal is expected to close as soon as next month, and will see DuckLabs’ team work with AWS to expand and scale up the capabilities of DuckDB’s data services globally.

Founded just over five years ago, DuckLabs has enjoyed tremendous success and traction with the open-source DuckDB project. Designed as an embeddable, high-performance analytical database, DuckDB makes data analysis faster, more portable and accessible to developers. It’s often referred to as the analytics equivalent of SQLite because of the way it enables developers to execute complex Structured Query Language-based queries from directly inside their applications or client environments, without needing to manage any server infrastructure.

The simplicity and efficiency of DuckDB are the two main reasons why the database has become so incredibly popular, with adoption growing to more than three million downloads per day at one point, DuckLabs said.

Fans of DuckDB may be a little concerned that the project’s main developer is joining AWS, but the cloud infrastructure giant insisted DuckLabs it remains committed to maintaining the database as an open-source project. It will also continue to develop DuckDB’s wider open-source ecosystem, including projects such as DuckLake and Quack, ensuring they will always be free to use under their MIT licenses.

DuckLabs’ core engineering team will continue to be based in Amsterdam, led by co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt. Moreover, the independent, nonprofit DuckDB Foundation will continue as the project’s overall steward.

In their own blog post, Mühleisen and Raasveldt said the acquisition deepens a collaboration between DuckLabs and AWS that began in early 2025, when they worked with one another to add support for DuckDB in Amazon S3 Tables and Amazon SageMaker Lakehouse. That work was all about helping enterprises to turbocharge their data operations with embeddable analytics, they said, and they’ll try to build on that now they’re a part of AWS.

For its part, AWS’ goal is to make its own native analytics capabilities faster, simpler and more cost-effective, which is exactly what DuckDB does. At the same time, DuckDB should benefit from being able to access AWS’s cloud infrastructure and global reach, which will allow it to bring its Duck Stack to a broader global audience.

AWS Vice President and Distinguished Engineer Andy Warfield highlighted the strong affinity between DuckDB and its developer community as one of the main catalysts for the acquisition. “DuckDB is an incredible open-source project with an amazing community; it is broadly used and very much loved by S3 customers today,” he said. “A lot of what has made DuckDB so successful is the fact that it is completely open-source and easily embeddable in so many types of applications. We are committed to the project’s continued development in open source and under the stewardship of the DuckDB Foundation.”

Constellation Research analyst Michael Ni told SiliconANGLE that AWS is getting substantial benefits from this acquisition, including a strong engineering team and the chance to accelerate DuckDB’s integration with its analytics tools. It will also get more influence over where analytics are run.

“AWS is smartly keeping DuckDB open-source, so it can continue to spread across the broader ecosystem,” Ni added. “As analytical compute becomes more portable, enterprises can place workloads based on cost, latency, governance needs and decision value, instead of defaulting to centralized databases. AWS wins if more of that work happens directly against S3 and inside its AWS services, because the easier it is to analyze data in place, the less reason there is to move it elsewhere.”

The transition to AWS means DuckLabs will be able to change its business model. Until now, it has relied on monetizing open-source users to fund its operations, such as through commercial support contracts and feature development partnerships. But going forward, it will no longer have to rely on those deals. Instead, AWS will provide the funds it needs to expand its investments in the broader open-source ecosystem.

For instance, AWS will use its money to establish a technical advisory board within the DuckDB Foundation to gather community feedback on its project roadmap. It will also open up DuckDB’s extension ecosystem to support signed extensions from third-party developers.

“We have seen what the DuckLabs and AWS teams can accomplish together,” Mühleisen said. “AWS brings the scale and reach to introduce this technology to many more users, including people who may eventually rely on the Duck Stack without needing to operate a database themselves.”