CedarDB launches limited cloud availability as it pitches one database for transactions and analytics

Databases have traditionally been built for one of two jobs: analytical databases help businesses spot trends and answer questions, while operational databases store day-to-day transaction records such as orders and payments. CedarDB supports both, Sichert told TechCrunch. CedarDB has been in development for the past decade, but its current momentum comes from enterprise companies whose existing data stacks may have been well suited to storing years of transactions, yet less suited to quickly answering analytical questions asked in natural language about that data.

CedarDB’s approach grew out of work on efficiency. It is a Technical University of Munich spinout based on Umbra, a research project built from scratch to beat legacy database engines at processing speed by making the most of modern hardware. Five Umbra researchers are cofounders. CedarDB promises faster performance without requiring more CPUs or processing power and memory, and requiring few changes from customers.

The company made sure CedarDB was compatible with PostgreSQL, an open-source database system. Sichert said this compatibility helps keep switching costs low because users do not need to rebuild their apps. It also has an added advantage: CedarDB follows the logic LLMs are most familiar with as a result of their training. Sichert said that decision was one of many that proved lucky in retrospect. Cofounder Christian Winter wrote in a blog post that after leaving academia the team set priorities including reliability, fault tolerance and compatibility with popular tools.

Not all decisions were obvious. The team strongly debated whether it should launch a cloud offering right away. It launched CedarDB Enterprise as an on-premise offering alongside its free CedarDB Community Edition, both announced in May last year at the same time as a €5.3 million seed funding round, about $6 million. The cloud offering was delayed, not abandoned.

After beta testing with users who had signed up for its waitlist, CedarDB announced limited availability of CedarDB Cloud on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. A fully managed, cloud-hosted version will likely help CedarDB expand its user base beyond large enterprises. It will also make it better prepared to compete with Databricks, a major data company that appears to have reached a similar conclusion.

At its Data + AI Summit in June, Databricks cited the "agentic era" as the reason it was launching LTAP, a new data architecture aiming to "unify transactions, analytics, streaming, and operational data on a single copy of storage in the lake." Sichert said it is too early to tell how disruptive this might be, but he interprets Databricks’ move as another sign that there is demand for what CedarDB does.

CedarDB plans to serve its first cloud users with its current team of 14 people. Sichert expects the company will need a larger team once it gets more traction. "And this is where we would raise our next round," he said. CedarDB’s founders are Moritz Sichert, Lukas Vogel, Philipp Fent, Dominik Durner and Christian Winter.