DuckLabs, the small Amsterdam company behind the open-source database DuckDB, is about to become part of one of the biggest cloud providers in the world. In an announcement that surprised much of the data engineering community, DuckLabs joins AWS effective in early September 2026, closing a chapter that started with a handful of researchers and ending, for now, with a deal involving Amazon Web Services.
Summary
Key takeaways
- DuckLabs will join AWS effective early September 2026, while the team stays based in Amsterdam.
- DuckDB, DuckLake, Quack, and other Duck Stack components will remain open source under the MIT license.
- The nonprofit DuckDB Foundation continues stewarding the projects, now with plans for a technical advisory board.
- DuckDB currently logs more than one million downloads every day worldwide.
- AWS and DuckLabs had already been collaborating since early 2025 on integrations with Amazon S3 and SageMaker Lakehouse.
DuckLabs Joins AWS to Accelerate DuckDB Growth
The move brings the team that built DuckDB, DuckLake and Quack directly under Amazon’s cloud computing umbrella, giving the project access to infrastructure and distribution it could not have built on its own. According to the company’s announcement, the goal is straightforward: use AWS’s scale to bring the technology to far more developers and organizations than a bootstrapped startup could ever reach alone.
Acquisition Timing and Team Location
The deal is expected to close in early September 2026, and DuckLabs has confirmed that its people are not relocating. The team will remain together in Amsterdam, continuing to work on DuckDB, DuckLake, Quack, and the wider community that has formed around what the company calls the “Duck Stack.” That continuity matters to a user base that has watched the project grow almost entirely through word of mouth and technical merit rather than marketing budgets.
The relationship between the two companies is not brand new. As reported by CryptoBriefing, DuckLabs and AWS had already been working closely together for more than a year before this announcement, with a collaboration that kicked off in early 2025 to integrate The collaboration between DuckDB and AWS offerings such as Amazon S3 and SageMaker Lakehouse proved successful enough for AWS to acquire the entire operation rather than simply keep licensing the technology.
Collaboration History and Strategic Rationale
DuckLabs framed the decision as a response to a problem most founders would be happy to have: too much success, too fast. The company said it worried its own growth as a small business would eventually outpace its ability to support DuckDB, potentially turning DuckLabs itself into a bottleneck for the project and the businesses building on top of it. Scaling into a much larger sales and operations organization on its own, the founders argued, risked pulling focus away from the technical work that made DuckDB popular in the first place.
Open Source Commitment and Project Governance
Despite the change in ownership, DuckDB and its related tools are staying free and open source. DuckLabs has been explicit that DuckDB, DuckLake, Quack, and the other open-source components of the Duck Stack will remain available under the permissive MIT license, one of the most developer-friendly licensing structures in software.
This matters because open-source communities tend to be wary of corporate acquisitions, fearing a shift toward closed features or paywalled functionality once a bigger company takes the wheel. DuckLabs appears to be trying to head off that concern directly by keeping the licensing terms untouched.
DuckDB Foundation’s Role in Stewardship
Project governance is staying with the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation, which will continue its stewardship of DuckDB and the surrounding ecosystem. That structure is designed specifically to keep decision-making about the technology’s direction separate from any single corporate owner, according to reporting on the acquisition. In practice, it means AWS becomes DuckLabs’ new home, but not the entity that controls the open-source code itself.
Implications for DuckLabs and the DuckDB Community
For the roughly 30-person DuckLabs team, the acquisition is meant to free up time for engineering rather than sales. The company said joining AWS “creates the space to concentrate on the technical work we care about most while operating at a scale we could not easily achieve on our own.” Andy Warfield, Distinguished Engineer and Vice President at AWS, echoed that sentiment, saying: “DuckDB is an incredible open source project with an amazing community; it is broadly used and very much loved by S3 customers today. After about two years of working closely with Mark, Hannes and the whole team at DuckLabs I’m excited at the opportunity to help the project have an even broader impact.”
Expanded Resources and What’s Planned Next
AWS has publicly committed to supporting DuckDB’s continued development and its wider community for the long term, a pledge DuckLabs described as central to why it agreed to the deal. Looking ahead, the DuckDB Foundation plans to introduce a technical advisory board so that prominent community members can weigh in on the project’s technical direction. There are also plans to open the extension stack so that third-party developers and organizations can build and sign extensions that run inside DuckDB, broadening who gets to contribute to the ecosystem beyond the core team.
This is one of the moments where the deal’s real significance shows up: an open-source project reaching a scale where its original independent structure can no longer keep pace with demand often has to choose between slowing down or finding a much bigger partner. DuckLabs chose the latter, betting that AWS’s infrastructure can carry DuckDB’s momentum further than a small Amsterdam team ever could on its own.
DuckDB’s Growth Story
DuckDB now sees more than one million downloads every day worldwide, a scale that helps explain why AWS was interested in the first place. Developers around the world use it to explore data, power products, teach data science courses, run research projects, and build systems the original team says it never anticipated.
From CWI Research Project to AWS-Backed Database
DuckDB’s roots trace back to CWI, the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science, where the project began as an academic exercise before becoming a production-ready tool. DuckDB reached its v1.0 milestone in June 2024, and the team expanded its ambitions further with DuckLake v1.0 in April 2026. The company behind it, originally named DuckDB Labs, rebranded to DuckLabs on May 27, 2026, reflecting that broader scope beyond a single database engine. Founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt built the business as a bootstrapped, founder-owned company rather than taking venture capital, growing it to more than 30 employees sustained through support contracts rather than outside investment.
That history is part of why the announcement landed as significant news across the developer world rather than just inside AWS’s own press channels. A project that grew almost entirely on technical reputation is now backed by one of the largest cloud infrastructures on the planet, while insisting its open-source promise remains intact.
FAQ
When will DuckLabs officially join Amazon Web Services?
DuckLabs will join AWS effective in early September 2026.
Will the DuckLabs team remain independent after joining AWS?
Yes, the DuckLabs team will remain based in Amsterdam and continue their work on DuckDB and related projects.
Will DuckDB and related projects remain open source after the acquisition?
Yes, DuckDB, DuckLake, Quack, and other Duck Stack components will remain open source under the MIT license.
Who will continue to oversee the DuckDB projects after the acquisition?
The nonprofit DuckDB Foundation will continue stewardship of the projects, ensuring community governance.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
