TL;DR
PostgreSQL continued to dominate database activity in 2025, with its v18 release and a string of high-profile acquisitions and new cloud services. Two competing projects to scale PostgreSQL horizontally and broad adoption of Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) were among the year's biggest platform and ecosystem developments.
What happened
The database story of 2025 centered on PostgreSQL. Version 18 landed with an asynchronous I/O storage subsystem and skip-scan support, along with optimizer tweaks. Commercial activity clustered around Postgres: Databricks acquired Neon for $1 billion, Snowflake bought CrunchyData for $250 million, and Microsoft launched a PostgreSQL DBaaS called HorizonDB. Multiple vendors retained or launched single-primary architectures that separate compute and storage, following Aurora-like designs. Two projects aiming to provide scale-out PostgreSQL appeared: Supabase hired Sugu to lead Multigres, a sharding middleware effort, and PlanetScale announced Neki, a Vitess-style project for Postgres. Across the ecosystem, every major DBMS added support for MCP, enabling LLMs to call out to databases and tools. Other notable items included Redis reverting a license change, SurrealDB reporting benchmarks tied to writes not flushed to disk, and a handful of startups pivoting or folding during the year.
Why it matters
- PostgreSQL’s ongoing momentum is concentrating product development, M&A and cloud competition around a single open-source engine.
- Large acquisitions and new cloud DBaaS launches reshape vendor positioning and could affect enterprise procurement and vendor lock-in dynamics.
- Distributed PostgreSQL efforts (Multigres, Neki) aim to provide horizontal scaling options that could change architectural choices for high-scale OLTP.
- Widespread MCP adoption standardizes LLM-to-DB interactions, potentially accelerating the integration of generative AI with operational datasets.
Key facts
- PostgreSQL v18 was released in November 2025 with an asynchronous I/O storage subsystem and skip-scan support.
- Databricks acquired Neon, a PostgreSQL DBaaS company, for $1 billion.
- Snowflake acquired CrunchyData for $250 million and built its PostgreSQL DBaaS on Crunchy Bridge.
- Microsoft launched a new PostgreSQL DBaaS named HorizonDB in 2025.
- Supabase hired Sugu (Vitess co-creator) to lead Multigres, a PostgreSQL sharding middleware project.
- PlanetScale announced Neki, described as a Vitess-style project for PostgreSQL.
- All major cloud vendors by 2025 had enhanced PostgreSQL offerings or projects.
- Many DBMSs added support for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) in 2025.
- Redis Ltd. reverted a prior license change within a year; SurrealDB’s strong benchmark numbers were tied to not flushing writes to disk.
- Some startups shifted strategy or shut down in 2025 (examples in the source include Tembo pivoting and Hydra and PostgresML going bust).
What to watch next
- Which of the new distributed PostgreSQL projects (Multigres or Neki) achieves broader production adoption — not confirmed in the source.
- Whether PostgreSQL v18’s asynchronous I/O leads to widespread changes in deployments and less reliance on the OS page cache — not confirmed in the source.
- Future M&A targets and whether more large buyers will acquire Postgres-focused companies — not confirmed in the source.
Quick glossary
- PostgreSQL: An open-source relational database management system known for extensibility, SQL compliance, and a broad ecosystem of tools and derivatives.
- DBaaS (Database as a Service): A cloud-hosted database offering where the provider manages infrastructure, updates, backups and availability for customers.
- Sharding (horizontal partitioning): A technique that splits a database into smaller, independent pieces (shards) across multiple nodes to improve scalability and throughput.
- Asynchronous I/O: An I/O model where storage operations can be issued without blocking the requesting process, allowing the system to handle other work while awaiting I/O completion.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP): A JSON-RPC client-server interface that lets large language models discover and invoke external tools, data sources, and actions in a standardized way.
Reader FAQ
Did Databricks go public in 2025?
No — the source reports Databricks raised two large funding rounds instead of going public.
What is MCP and why did DBMSs add it?
MCP is a standardized JSON-RPC interface that lets LLMs interact with tools and data; in 2025 many DBMSs added MCP support to enable LLM-driven integrations.
Are the new PostgreSQL scale-out projects production-ready?
not confirmed in the source.
Were SurrealDB’s benchmark results reliable?
The source indicates SurrealDB reported strong benchmarks because writes were not flushed to disk and lost data, raising reliability concerns.
Databases in 2025: A Year in Review Posted on January 04, 2026 Another year passes. I was hoping to write more articles instead of just these end-of-the-year screeds, but I…
Sources
- Databases in 2025: A Year in Review
- 2025 Cloud Database Market: The Year in Review
- Database trends of 2025: Rankings and key technology shifts
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