Add to Google Preferred Sources
Amazon Web Services has acquired DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based company behind the open-source DuckDB analytics database. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close as soon as next month. DuckDB and related projects will remain free and open source under MIT licenses, with the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation continuing to provide independent governance. DuckLabs co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will lead the team at AWS and guide the project’s technical direction. AWS plans to support the DuckDB community by helping create a technical advisory board under the foundation and expanding the extension system to allow signed third-party extensions. The companies have collaborated since 2024, notably on S3 Tables. AWS aims to make its analytics tools faster, simpler, and more cost-effective through the integration.
Key Elements
Amazon Web Services has acquired DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based development and support company behind the open- cloud giant’s data analytics offerings
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close as soon as next month, subject to standard closing conditions.
DuckLabs was founded by Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, the creators of DuckDB, an in-process online analytical processing database that has gained a strong following among developers and analytics users since its public launch in 2022. Written in C++, DuckDB is embedded within a host process, meaning there is no database server software to install, update, or maintain. The Python package, for example, can run queries directly on data in Pandas without importing or copying data.
The database reached its 1.0 release in 2024 and has since expanded into data lakes with DuckLake, which uses DuckDB as metadata storage to address the “small changes” problem that plagues traditional data lake architectures.
AWS said DuckDB, DuckLake, and related projects will remain free and openon continuing to provide independent governance. The foundation is currently led by Mühleisen and Raasveldt
Mühleisen, who serves as DuckLabs’ co-founder and CEO, said the acquisition creates an opportunity to expand the foundation’s role in avoiding potential conflicts of interest with other technology giants. DuckDB can read and write to Google Sheets and query Google BigQuery datasets through extensions, for instance.
“We can expand the role of the Foundation as a place where the stakeholders or the people that are building things with DuckDB are coming together,” Mühleisen said. “We are thinking about adding a Technical Advisory Board to the Foundation, so that whoever is betting on DuckDB can come together in the Board and have a communication channel through the Foundation, which stays independent.”
The foundation has yet to decide the exact governance and voting rights that will determine the project’s development direction, but Mühleisen said it would create a mechanism for the community to play a greater role.
AWS also plans to expand DuckDB’s extension system to allow signed extensions from third-party developers, further opening the ecosystem.
AWS and DuckLabs have worked together since 2024, with notable collaboration around S3 Tables, announced by AWS in December 2024. Mühleisen said the teams worked to ensure “first-class support for S3 Tables in DuckDB.”
Andy Warfield, AWS vice president and distinguished engineer, said DuckDB’s developer community was a key factor in the acquisition decision.
“DuckDB is an incredible openry much loved by S3 customers today,” Warfield said in a statement. “After about two years of working closely with Mark, Hannes and the team at DuckLabs, I’m excited at the opportunity to help the project have an even broader impact.”
He added that much of DuckDB’s success stems from being completely open committed to the project’s continued development in open
For DuckLabs, joining AWS provides significantly greater resources. Until now, the company has funded its work through commercial support and feature development deals. Under AWS, it will no longer need to rely on those revenue sources.
“Joining AWS gives us the resources and reach to bring this technology to many more developers and organizations and to pursue ideas at a scale that would have been difficult for us to reach alone,” Mühleisen and Raasveldt said in a joint statement on the company’s website.
The DuckLabs team will continue to be based in Amsterdam, and the co-founders will lead the team at AWS while guiding the open-
For AWS, the acquisition aligns with its strategy of making analytics “faster, simpler, and more cost-effective for customers,” according to management. The integration of DuckLabs’ database expertise with AWS’s data analytics services positions the cloud provider to better compete in the increasingly crowded analytics market.
Amazon stock was down 0.29% at market open on the day of the announcement. Wall Street maintains a Strong Buy consensus rating on the stock based on 39 Buys and one Hold assigned in the last three months, with an average price target of $333.00, implying 27.7% upside potential.
The acquisition reflects a broader trend among major cloud providers to deepen their open-source analytics capabilities. DuckDB’s lightweight, embeddable architecture has made it particularly attractive for developers working with data in S3, AWS’s object storage service. By bringing the core development team in-house while maintaining open-source governance through the foundation, AWS is betting it can accelerate DuckDB’s adoption while preserving the community trust that has driven its popularity.
The deal also highlights the delicate balance cloud providers must strike when acquiring open-endent foundation governance appears designed to reassure the developer community that DuckDB will not be steered exclusively toward AWS’s commercial interests
Once added, BigGo Finance appears first in Google Search Top Stories, so you get the broadest, most up-to-the-minute, and most comprehensive global financial news first.
