Amazon Web Services Acquires DuckLabs, Dutch Developer of DuckDB

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Amazon Web Services Inc. announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire DuckLabs B.V., headquartered in Amsterdam. DuckLabs is the developer of the open-source analytical database DuckDB. The transaction is expected to close as early as next month, after which the DuckLabs team will collaborate with AWS to expand and enhance DuckDB data services globally.

Founded more than five years ago, DuckLabs gained widespread attention through its open-source project DuckDB. DuckDB is an embeddable, high-performance analytical database designed to make data analysis faster, more portable, and easier for developers to adopt. Because developers can execute complex structured query language (SQL) queries directly within applications or client environments without managing any server infrastructure, the database is often referred to as the SQLite of analytics. DuckLabs stated that simplicity and efficiency are the two main reasons for DuckDB's popularity, with adoption once growing to more than 3 million downloads per day.

In response to concerns about the project's lead developers joining AWS, AWS stated that DuckLabs remains committed to keeping DuckDB open source and to advancing the broader open-source ecosystem around DuckDB, including projects such as DuckLake and Quack, ensuring these projects remain freely available under the MIT license. The DuckLabs core engineering team will remain in Amsterdam, led by co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, and the independent, non-profit DuckDB Foundation will continue to serve as the project's overall steward.

In a blog post, Mühleisen and Raasveldt revealed that this acquisition deepens the collaboration between DuckLabs and AWS that began in early 2025, when the two added DuckDB support to Amazon S3 Tables and Amazon SageMaker Lakehouse. They said the work aims to help enterprises accelerate data operations through embedded analytics, and that joining AWS will allow them to build on that foundation. For AWS, the goal is to make its native analytics capabilities faster, simpler, and more cost-effective—exactly the direction in which DuckDB excels. DuckDB, in turn, can leverage AWS's cloud infrastructure and global reach to bring the technology to a broader user base.

AWS Vice President and Distinguished Engineer Andy Warfield cited the close connection between DuckDB and its developer community as one of the primary drivers behind the acquisition. He noted that DuckDB is widely used and well-loved by S3 customers, and that much of its success stems from being fully open source and easy to embed in a variety of applications. AWS is committed to keeping the project thriving under an open-source model and under the stewardship of the DuckDB Foundation.

Upon joining AWS, DuckLabs' business model will shift. Previously, it funded operations through open-source commercialization approaches such as commercial support contracts and feature development partnerships; going forward, it will no longer rely on these arrangements, as AWS will provide the funding needed to expand the broader open-source ecosystem. For example, AWS will fund the establishment of a technical advisory committee within the DuckDB Foundation to gather community feedback on the project's roadmap, and will open up DuckDB's extension ecosystem to support third-party developers in submitting signed extensions.