AWS acquires DuckLabs, maker of DuckDB with 3M daily downloads

Amazon Web Services agreed to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based developer behind the open-source analytical database DuckDB, in a deal that embeds one of the developer community's most-used data tools directly into AWS's analytics stack.

"DuckDB is an incredible open source project with an amazing community; it is broadly used and very much loved by S3 customers today," Andy Warfield, vice president and distinguished engineer at AWS, said. "We are committed to the project's continued development in open source and under the stewardship of the DuckDB Foundation."

The deal, expected to close in early September, will see DuckLabs' team of more than 30 employees join AWS while remaining based in Amsterdam. Financial terms were not disclosed. DuckDB and its related projects — including DuckLake and Quack — will remain free and open source under MIT licenses, with the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation continuing as steward. Co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will continue leading the project's technical direction.

The acquisition deepens a collaboration that began in early 2025, when AWS and DuckLabs worked together on DuckDB support for Amazon S3 Tables and SageMaker Lakehouse. For AWS, the deal strengthens its position against rivals including Snowflake, Google BigQuery, and Microsoft Fabric in the data analytics market. For DuckLabs, joining AWS removes the commercial pressure to convert free users into paying support customers, freeing the team to expand the open-source project.

From Academic Spin-off to Developer Favorite

DuckDB originated at Amsterdam's Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), a mathematical and theoretical computing research center, before spinning out as DuckLabs just over five years ago. The company was never financed with external capital — founders and employees remained sole owners, funding growth through support and development contracts. 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 in data lake architectures.

Written in C++, DuckDB is embedded within a host process, eliminating the need for a separate DBMS server. The Python package can run queries directly on data in Pandas without importing or copying data — a design that has made it the analytics equivalent of SQLite for developers. The database can also read and write to Google Sheets and query Google BigQuery datasets via extensions, a flexibility that has contributed to its broad adoption across data engineering teams.

Governance and Extension Framework

Mühleisen said the acquisition will expand the DuckDB Foundation's role as a neutral meeting point for stakeholders. The foundation is considering adding a technical advisory board where commercial users can provide input on the project's roadmap. DuckLabs also plans to open the extension framework to support signed extensions from third-party developers and organizations.

"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.

The governance structure and voting rights determining the project's development direction have yet to be finalized, but Mühleisen said the mechanism would give the community a greater voice. The foundation's independence is particularly important given DuckDB's cross-platform reach — the database works with Google Sheets and BigQuery, meaning AWS will now own the primary development team behind a tool that also serves competing cloud platforms.

For AWS, the deal adds a developer-loved tool to its data stack at a time when the cloud analytics market is increasingly contested. Snowflake and Databricks have both built substantial businesses around cloud data platforms, while Google's BigQuery and Microsoft's Fabric compete for the same workloads. DuckDB's embeddable architecture could give AWS a differentiated entry point for developers who want analytical capabilities without managing server infrastructure. The acquisition also shows AWS's willingness to invest in open-source projects — following its earlier donation of OpenSearch to the Linux Foundation — as a strategy to attract and retain developer mindshare.

The deal also carries implications for the broader database market. DuckDB's rise has pressured traditional data warehouse vendors, and its integration into AWS's stack could accelerate adoption of embedded analytics across enterprise applications. For developers, the acquisition means the team behind DuckDB will have AWS's resources to invest in the project, potentially accelerating feature development and performance improvements.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.