Amazon buys DuckLabs and brings DuckDB into Aurora PostgreSQL
AWS is using DuckDB in Aurora PostgreSQL for queries that blend live and stored data, while DuckDB stays open source under its current governance.
Amazon has bought DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind DuckDB, and AWS is already shipping a DuckDB-powered feature in Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. The move keeps Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt in charge of DuckDB’s technical direction, while DuckDB and the rest of the Duck Stack stay open source under the MIT licence and under the DuckDB Foundation’s oversight. AWS says the first customer-facing use is Aurora PostgreSQL support for queries that combine live Aurora data with historical data in S3, AWS Glue Data Catalog-managed Apache Iceberg tables, Parquet, and Iceberg data in S3 Tables, reducing the need for reverse ETL pipelines. The feature is available now in all commercial regions and AWS GovCloud (US) at no extra feature charge, with billing tied to incremental Aurora compute and S3 requests.
Why it matters
For Aurora PostgreSQL users, this turns DuckDB into a built-in way to query live database data alongside S3, Iceberg, Parquet and S3 Tables in one place. That matters because AWS is positioning the feature for the bulk of analytical queries, many of which are 1 terabyte of data or less, so more analysis can happen without moving data into separate pipelines first. The feature is already live in commercial regions and AWS GovCloud (US), with pricing tied to Aurora compute and S3 requests rather than a separate feature fee.
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Sources
- InfoQ