MariaDB Reacquires SkySQL: A Strategic Move to Enhance AI and Cloud Capabilities

What a difference 2 years makes: MariaDB buys back SkySQL

Because the DBaaS has lately become AI-tastic, among other things It's less than two years since MariaDB spun out SkySQL, but it's already unspinning the database-as-a-service outfit, which has since been marinated in AI sauce. "Acquiring SkySQL helps accelerate plans and adds further innovation to MariaDB Cloud," MariaDB CEO Rohit de Souza said in a statement on Tuesday. Terms for the acquisition were not announced, though MariaDB had retained an equity stake in SkySQL. MariaDB launched SkySQL in 2020, giving customers a cloud-based way to use its open source database, a venerable fork of MySQL. But by late 2023, after a rocky public debut, the company cut jobs and offloaded SkySQL and its PostgreSQL-compatible front end, Xpand. The move confounded analysts, who saw momentum in the database-as-a-service market and feared that MariaDB may be hobbling its future growth, with one warning us at the time that the products were "the company's best drivers for future growth." But a lot has changed since then. The company went private again a year ago, via a private equity takeover. Then, in March this year, it said it wanted to get back into the database-as-a-service biz. At the time, De Souza told The Register that MariaDB wanted to avoid its previous approach with SkySQL, because "the way that had been structured was almost having them compete with the cloud hyperscalers, which is crazy." Also, he added, "the product wasn't really there." That's clearly changed, with MariaDB trilling in its Tuesday announcement that SkySQL had "significantly advanced its product offering" since being offloaded. A big part of that advancement was down to SkySQL's introduction of a money-saving serverless mode, not to mention its addition of support for Microsoft's Azure public cloud, but its embrace of AI during its 18 months of independence surely didn't hurt. When it announced a $6.6 million seed round in December of last year, SkySQL launched semi-autonomous "semantic agents" that customers can build to retrieve metadata and generate SQL queries off the back of natural language user queries. Keeping such functionality on-platform comes with security and compliance benefits, and SkySQL also claimed reduced hallucinations. "By bringing SkySQL's DBaaS into the MariaDB portfolio, we are immediately addressing our customers' needs while also gaining a robust foundation to make MariaDB the default option for building GenAI applications," said MariaDB chief product officer Vikas Mathur in Tuesday's statement. "Under new ownership and leadership, [MariaDB] noticed our impressive progress and realized that SkySQL was now essential to their cloud strategy," crowed SkySQL CEO Nithin Rao in a LinkedIn post. He and the rest of the SkySQL team will join (and in many cases rejoin) MariaDB as part of the deal. ®

MariaDB buys its former subsidiary SkySQL to enhance its agentic AI and serverless capabilities - SiliconANGLE

MariaDB buys its former subsidiary SkySQL to enhance its agentic AI and serverless capabilities The privately-held database company MariaDB plc seems to have changed its mind about the future of SkySQL Inc., deciding it does need it after all. In a somewhat unusual reversal, it revealed it's buying its former subsidiary for an undisclosed price, just 18 months after it spun it out as a separate entity. SkySQL is the creator of a powerful serverless, cloud-hosted database-as-a-service platform that's infused with artificial intelligence capabilities. Originally founded as a subsidiary of MariaDB, it became a standalone entity in December 2023. Founded in 2009, MariaDB is the creator and lead developer of the popular open-source relational database of the same name. It's designed to deliver high availability, performance and scalability, and serves as an alternative to platforms such as the Oracle Database. MariaDB's flagship offering is MariaDB Enterprise server, a fully managed database-as-a-service platform that supports both transactional and analytical workloads. The services allow businesses to leverage the power of open-source databases in cloud environments with minimal management overhead. It's used by companies to power mission-critical applications in a range of industries, including finance, e-commerce and telecommunications. When it was spun off, SkySQL became the exclusive provider of the SkySQL database-as-a-service offering, which is a cloud-hosted and production-grade version of the MariaDB database. The platform is built atop of the Kubernetes orchestration manager for self-contained software environments, better known as containers, which allow applications to run on multiple computing platforms, and can assimilate with any kind of cloud infrastructure. Having previously kicked SkySQL out, MariaDB now welcomes it back with open arms. SkySQL's platform will be folded into the MariaDB Cloud offering, which is expected to become a key part of MariaDB's product lineup, alongside MariaDB Enterprise. According to MariaDB, its change of heart stems from increased customer expectations for greater flexibility and deployment choice. MariaDB Cloud provides access to a fully provisioned and managed database that can be deployed on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, as well as a serverless mode that allows developers to get started using the service right away. MariaDB Chief Executive Rohit de Souza said customers have made it clear that they need powerful, reliable database solutions wherever their business takes them, and that might be in the cloud or in hybrid cloud/on-premises environments. "Acquiring SkySQL helps accelerate plans and adds further innovation to MariaDB Cloud," De Souza said. "It's a strategic investment in our customers and a decisive step to enhance our ability to provide the comprehensive, modern, world-class database platform our customers need to thrive and maintain a competitive edge." SkySQL also boasts some useful agentic AI capabilities in the shape of "SkyAI agents" that make it possible for developers to interact with their data using plain English commands instead of Structured Query Language-based queries. The SkyAI agents are said to minimize so-called "hallucinations" and inaccurate responses by enhancing query precision. In addition, they also integrate with SkySQL's built-in vector database, so developers can leverage unstructured data for AI more easily. All of these capabilities will now be made available in MariaDB Cloud. SkySQL Chief Technology Officer Jags Ramnarayan said his company's platform has evolved rapidly over the past 18 months, and has become a favored choice among developers of AI-driven applications. "As a part of MariaDB again, we are now able to bring [the platform] to customers across the globe faster and more effectively," he said. MariaDB said SkySQL's entire staff will rejoin the company, significantly enhancing its product, engineering, support and go-to-market teams.