AWS Acquires DuckLabs, Adding DuckDB Team Amid Cloud Data Shakeup

AWS Moves to Strengthen Analytics With DuckLabs Acquisition

Amazon Web Services has signed a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabs, the company behind DuckDB, marking a significant shift in the cloud data landscape1

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. The transaction is expected to close in early September, bringing the entire DuckLabs team of more than 30 people based in Amsterdam to AWS1

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. Financial terms were not disclosed, though the deal reflects Amazon's broader push to transform S3, its flagship cloud storage service, into a platform where customers can analyze data directly rather than simply store it1

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DuckDB Remains Open Source Under MIT License

AWS is not acquiring the DuckDB open-source project itself. The open-source analytical database will remain free and available under the MIT license, overseen by the independent nonprofit DuckDB Foundation1

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. Co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, who created DuckDB, will continue leading the team and setting the project's technical direction from Amsterdam2

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. Related projects including DuckLake and Quack will also remain open source1

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. According to MotherDuck CEO Jordan Tigani, the DuckDB Foundation has "iron clad control over the DuckDB IP," ensuring the project's independence1

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Pressure Mounts on Snowflake and Databricks

The Amazon to acquire DuckLabs deal comes as the data industry shifts toward keeping information in open formats in cloud storage, where it can be queried directly rather than loaded into a separate warehouse1

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. This shift puts pressure on companies like Snowflake and Databricks, which sell the compute and governance layer on top of stored data1

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. Both are major AWS partners as well as competitors, with large numbers of customers running on Amazon's cloud data infrastructure1

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. The acquisition gives Amazon a team experienced in building fast, lightweight analytics software that runs directly against data sitting in cloud storage1

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AI Agents Drive DuckDB's Strategic Value

AI has raised the stakes, driving up both the volume of data companies keep in the cloud and the cost of analyzing it1

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. Amazon says DuckDB is a natural fit for AI agents, which query data much the way people do, experimenting with small sets before deciding what they want1

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. "DuckDB ends up being naturally optimized for AI agents to use," wrote Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, the AWS VP who leads its cloud data services1

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. AWS and DuckLabs have worked together since 2024, including on DuckDB support for Amazon's S3 Tables and SageMaker Lakehouse1

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. The acquisition aims to enhance analytics capabilities and make AWS analytics faster, simpler, and more cost-effective for customers2

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MotherDuck Responds and Expands Enterprise Support

MotherDuck, a Seattle-based company that sells a cloud service built on DuckDB, was founded in partnership with the DuckLabs team four years ago1

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. Three of its engineers are among the top 10 outside contributors to the DuckDB project1

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. CEO Jordan Tigani said Amazon is following a familiar pattern: "That's Amazon's playbook, after all: wait until an open source project gets big enough, then launch it as a service"1

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. He expects the deal to be good for DuckDB because Amazon has a financial reason to keep the project open and healthy, noting that if DuckDB becomes the standard, it will drive more compute on AWS infrastructure1

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. MotherDuck announced it is now offering enterprise support for DuckDB with Mühleisen and Raasveldt's "explicit blessing"1

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DuckLabs' Bootstrap Journey Ends With Strategic Exit

DuckLabs was founded a little more than five years ago as a long-term home for the DuckDB development team1

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. The company turned down venture capital, stayed owned by its founders and employees, and grew to more than 30 people, funding itself through support and feature-development contracts1

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. In a blog post, Mühleisen and Raasveldt wrote that they had come to worry DuckDB's growth would outpace their ability to support it, and that their small company "could become a bottleneck for the project"1

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. Building a larger sales and operations organization would have pulled the team away from the technical work that made DuckDB successful1

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. Andy Warfield, Amazon vice president and distinguished engineer, said: "For almost a decade, the DuckDB team has worked with the idea of building a tool that lets people work with data, with confidence"2

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