AWS acquires DuckLabs, the team behind DuckDB

AWS is buying DuckLabs, but your favorite local data tool isn't going behind a paywall.

Amazon Web Services announced it is acquiring DuckLabs, the team behind DuckDB, DuckLake, and Quack. The deal is expected to close in early September. The 30-person team will remain together in Amsterdam to work on AWS data services while continuing their open-source contributions.

Why it matters: DuckDB sees more than one million downloads every day, offering a fast way to query data locally without running a heavy database server. The founders bootstrapped DuckLabs for five years, but worried their small team would become a bottleneck as adoption exploded. Joining AWS gives them massive reach and infrastructure, while the non-profit DuckDB Foundation maintains ownership of the code under the open-source MIT license.

Here's the gist: the core open-source tools stay free for everyone, while AWS gains top database talent to help build its cloud analytics pipelines.

Expect DuckDB's engine to start quietly running inside a lot more cloud products soon.