CWI spin-off DuckDB Labs on a US adventure

DuckDB was started in 2019 by Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, two researchers from CWI’s Database Architectures research group. They offered a database that you can easily install and integrate into running processes. This makes new applications possible, such as mobile apps and self-driving cars. The system works anywhere, quickly and even in a web browser, making it popular among data scientists and technology companies. It is downloaded more than eight hundred thousand times a month.

Great Google Query

DuckDB has caught the eye in the United States. There, Jordan Tigani found a way to use this database system as a cloud service. Much like he did before when he founded BigQuery, Google’s cloud-based data analytics platform. Tigani co-founded Motherduck with other tech veterans and with the collaboration of DuckDB Labs and thus secured the $47.5 million investment this week.

The idea behind Motherduck is that it is a good alternative to leading cloud solution providers for data analytics. According to the startup, these mainly focus on processing very large amounts of data, which is irrelevant for an average user. The young company promises easy and fast data processing, a personalized user experience, without high costs.

Vectorized

Data processing at DuckDB is column-based and vectorized, which means, according to Motherduck, that even on a simple laptop, you can run a database table with a billion rows in a second.

“We’re building a data analytics platform that scales with you, without the complexity of distributed systems. You can easily scale up and down as your needs change. Tigani’s team includes people from data companies such as Google, Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Meta, and Elastic. Motherduck is based in Seattle.