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  • Databricks New Funding Round ($100B Valuation)💸💰|MariaDB embeds AI|Amazon Aurora|Optimizing databases|UK Based Database Software Companies

Databricks New Funding Round ($100B Valuation)💸💰|MariaDB embeds AI|Amazon Aurora|Optimizing databases|UK Based Database Software Companies

Did you even know startups could get to Series K funding? Databricks, just go public already...

Author

Gladstone Benjamin
August 25, 2025

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What’s in today’s newsletter:

Also, check out the the weekly Deep Dive - UK Based Database Software Companies, and Everything Else in Cloud Databases.

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DATABRICKS

TL;DR: Databricks is nearing a $100 billion valuation after raising billions in funding, fueled by strong revenue and Fortune 500 clients, emphasizing growing demand for cloud-based AI and data analytics platforms.

  • Databricks is approaching a $100 billion valuation after a recent successful funding round.  

  • The company raised billions, showcasing investor confidence and robust revenue growth.  

  • Databricks serves many Fortune 500 companies, supporting data operations and innovation.  

  • Its growth highlights the rising importance of cloud-based AI and data analytics infrastructure.

Why this matters: Databricks nearing a $100 billion valuation underscores the critical role of cloud AI and data analytics in modern business. Investor confidence and Fortune 500 reliance signal accelerating demand for scalable AI infrastructure, likely driving innovation, competition, and broader adoption across industries worldwide.

RELATIONAL DATABASE

TL;DR: MariaDB plans to embed AI-powered tools in its cloud database services, enhancing automation, query optimization, security, and multi-cloud flexibility to improve performance, reduce costs, and support real-time analytics for businesses.

  • MariaDB plans to embed AI tools in its cloud services to optimize database performance and automate routine tasks.  

  • Machine learning algorithms will enhance query optimization, anomaly detection, and reduce human intervention in data processing.  

  • The roadmap supports multi-cloud compatibility, enabling flexibility, ease of migration, and hybrid cloud deployments for enterprises.  

  • Integrating AI aims to improve security, reduce costs, and provide adaptive real-time analytics for business decision-making.

Why this matters: MariaDB’s AI-driven cloud enhancements streamline data management, boosting efficiency and security while reducing costs. Multi-cloud compatibility offers enterprises flexibility and vendor independence, supporting modern hybrid strategies. This positions MariaDB to influence industry-wide adoption of intelligent, agile databases critical for competitive digital transformation.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

TL;DR: Amazon Aurora, launched in 2014, delivers scalable, high-performance cloud databases with MySQL/PostgreSQL support, continuous storage scaling, multi-master clusters, and serverless auto-scaling, driving innovation in digital transformation and analytics.

  • Amazon Aurora, launched in 2014, offers high-performance, cloud-native relational database services with MySQL and PostgreSQL support.  

  • Key innovations include continuous storage scaling up to 128 TB and multi-master clusters for global high availability.  

  • Aurora Serverless enables automatic scaling based on workloads, reducing costs and simplifying database management.  

  • Aurora's growth supports businesses' digital transformation and emerging workloads like real-time analytics and global applications.

Why this matters: Amazon Aurora’s decade of innovation has transformed database management, empowering businesses with scalable, cost-effective, and high-performance cloud-native solutions. Its continued evolution supports critical modern workloads, driving digital transformation and reinforcing AWS’s dominance in the cloud database market, essential for future enterprise growth and agility.

DATABASE MANAGEMENT

TL;DR: The article explains database indexing internals, highlighting B-tree structures, index types, and maintenance, empowering developers and DBAs to optimize query speed, scalability, and resource efficiency in SQL Server.

  • Database indexes serve as roadmaps that enable faster data retrieval without full table scans.  

  • Clustered and non-clustered indexes use B-tree structures to optimize searching, insertion, and deletion.  

  • Regular index maintenance, including updating statistics and managing fragmentation, is vital for query performance.  

  • Deep understanding of indexing helps improve application speed, scalability, and reduces resource consumption.

Why this matters: Mastering database indexing internals empowers developers and DBAs to optimize query speed and resource use, enhancing application performance and scalability. Effective index design and maintenance reduce operational costs and improve user experience, crucial in handling increasing data volumes and complex queries in modern database environments.

GRAPH DATABASE

TL;DR: The article presents a novel method using network digital twins, graph databases, and agentic AI to identify true root causes, enabling proactive, scalable troubleshooting and improved system resilience and performance.

  • The article presents a new approach using digital twins, graph databases, and agentic AI for root cause analysis.  

  • Network digital twins combined with graph models reveal complex system interdependencies visually and structurally.  

  • Agentic AI interacts with digital twins to test hypotheses and identify true causal relationships beyond correlation.  

  • This method enables proactive troubleshooting, improving system resilience, reducing downtime, and optimizing performance.

Why this matters: Combining network digital twins with graph databases and agentic AI enables precise root cause analysis, moving beyond mere correlation. This proactive approach enhances system resilience, reduces downtime, and optimizes performance, crucial for managing increasingly complex, interconnected systems in dynamic operational environments.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN CLOUD DATABASES

  • Zscaler uses trillions of logs to power AI advances

  • Data Engineer Saves Millions by Fixing Analytics Errors

  • BBC stores 100 years of archives with AWS cloud

  • MongoDB boosts AI memory with LangGraph integration

  • Manage data efficiently with Valentina Studio.

  • AWS Dominates Cloud Landscape with Unmatched Scale

  • Oracle launches GPT-5 in database, cloud apps

DEEP DIVE
UK Based Database Software Companies

I have always had a fondness for the United Kingdom for myriad reasons. I have a good amount of family, friends and colleagues that live there. The times I have visited there have been quite memorable.

I am based in Canada, but the second largest cohort of the newsletter subscribers are based in the UK, right behind the United States. In fact, this newsletter was inspired by a day trip to York last year, while staying in Manchester.

Because of my fondness for the country, and the the discovery that 15% of the newsletter subscribers that are UK based, I wondered to myself “What are the some of the UK based database companies I should have on my radar”?

I have always known about the heavyweight Red Gate Software, but what about some of the others?

This not a comprehensive list but an interesting one nonetheless. Here we go:

KX Headquartered in Newry, Northern Ireland, KX is the company behind kdb+, a world-leading time-series and in-memory database. Renowned for its extreme speed and performance, kdb+ is a dominant technology in the financial services sector, where it is used for high-frequency trading, real-time analytics, and processing massive streams of market data. The platform combines a powerful columnar database with an integrated programming language, q, to enable rapid analysis of both real-time and historical datasets on a massive scale.

  • Website: https://kx.com/

QuestDB Originating in London, England, QuestDB is an open-source, high-performance time-series database built from the ground up for speed and operational simplicity. It is particularly well-suited for financial services, IoT, and application monitoring use cases that require rapid ingestion of data and real-time analytical queries using a familiar SQL interface. While the company is now incorporated in the US for venture capital purposes, its roots and a significant portion of its development team remain firmly in the UK.

  • Website: https://questdb.io/

Memgraph With its headquarters in London, England, Memgraph has developed a high-performance, in-memory graph database platform designed for real-time transactional processing and analytics. It empowers developers to build sophisticated applications that can uncover complex relationships and patterns within their data, making it ideal for fraud detection, cybersecurity, and recommendation engines. Memgraph is compatible with the popular Cypher query language and offers a suite of developer tools, including visualization libraries, to accelerate the development of graph-powered applications.

  • Website: https://memgraph.com/

Vaticle Vaticle is a London, England-based company that created TypeDB, a strongly-typed database designed to solve highly complex data problems. Unlike traditional SQL or NoSQL databases, TypeDB uses a rich type system and automated reasoning to manage and query intricate datasets, making it a powerful tool for sectors like life sciences, financial services, and national security. Developers interact with TypeDB using its declarative query language, TypeQL, which allows for simpler and more intuitive modeling of complex information.

  • Website: https://vaticle.com/

SurrealDB Based in London, England, SurrealDB is a groundbreaking multi-model NewSQL database designed to simplify the development of modern, real-time applications. It consolidates multiple database functionalities into a single platform, supporting document, graph, and relational data models, along with features like full-text search and geospatial indexing. With its real-time data synchronization capabilities and an embedded scripting engine, SurrealDB aims to reduce backend complexity and empower developers to build feature-rich applications faster.

  • Website: https://surrealdb.com/

XTDB XTDB is an open-source bitemporal database developed by JUXT, a technology consultancy headquartered in London, England. Its unique value proposition is its ability to model and query data across two dimensions of time: "valid time" (when something was true in the real world) and "transaction time" (when the information was recorded in the database). This makes XTDB an ideal choice for applications in finance, insurance, and other regulated industries where a complete, immutable audit trail and historical "as-of" queries are essential for compliance and analytics.

  • Website: https://xtdb.com/

Zegami Spun out of the University of Oxford and headquartered in Oxford, England, Zegami is not a traditional database but a unique visual data exploration platform. It is designed to help users manage and understand large, complex unstructured datasets, particularly collections of images and documents. Zegami's highly interactive, visual interface allows for the intuitive filtering, sorting, and grouping of data, enabling users in fields like life sciences and research to discover patterns, anomalies, and insights that would be difficult to find using conventional query methods.

  • Website: https://zegami.com/

Matillion With dual headquarters in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, and Denver, USA, Matillion is a UK-native company specializing in cloud data integration and transformation. Their platform provides a low-code/no-code interface for building powerful ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and ELT pipelines that move and prepare data for analysis within cloud data platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, and Google BigQuery. Matillion helps organizations unlock the value of their data by making the process of data engineering faster and accessible to a wider range of users.

  • Website: https://www.matillion.com/

Redgate Software A cornerstone of the UK's database technology scene, Redgate Software is headquartered in Cambridge, England. The company is a leading provider of Database DevOps solutions, offering a comprehensive suite of tools that help professionals build, deploy, and monitor databases across a wide range of platforms, including Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL. Redgate's products enable teams to automate database development processes, ensure data compliance, and maintain performance, effectively solving the challenges of including the database in modern CI/CD workflows.

  • Website: https://www.red-gate.com/

Gladstone Benjamin