AWS to acquire DuckLabs; DuckDB stays MIT under the DuckDB Foundation
AWS signed a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabs, the 30-person Amsterdam team behind DuckDB, effective early September 2026, with founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt still leading the technical direction. DuckDB, DuckLake and Quack stay free and MIT-licensed under the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation, so an engine at over one million downloads a day now sits inside the cloud vendor that ships it in S3 Tables and SageMaker Lakehouse.
Source: ducklabs.com ↗
DuckDB and the other open-source components of the "Duck Stack" will remain free and open source under the MIT license, with the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation continuing its stewardship of the projects.
DuckLabs founders, announcement
Why this matters
- → One-million-downloads-per-day open-source database now backed by AWS infrastructure and sales reach.
- → MIT license and nonprofit foundation guarantee DuckDB stays vendor-neutral despite acquisition.
- → Founder-led team remains together in Amsterdam, preventing typical post-acquisition brain drain.
Open source survives acquisition