Cockroach Labs
Cockroach Labs is a computer software company that develops commercial database management systems.[1] It is best known for CockroachDB, which has been compared to Google Spanner.[2] CockroachDB is a project that is designed to store copies of data in multiple locations in order to deliver speedy access.[3][4] It is described as a scalable, consistently-replicated, transactional datastore.[5]
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Private | |
Industry | Software |
Founded | 2015 |
Founder | Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis, Ben Darnell |
Headquarters | New York City |
Key people | Spencer Kimball (CEO) Peter Mattis (VP of Engineering) Ben Darnell (CTO) Nate Stewart (Chief Product Officer) Lindsay Grenawalt (Chief People Officer) |
Services | commercial database management systems |
Website | www |
History
Cockroach Labs was founded in 2015 by ex-Google employees Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis, and Ben Darnell. Prior to Cockroach Labs, Kimball and Mattis were key members of the Google File System team[6] while Darnell was a key member of the Google Reader team.[7] While at Google, all three had previously used Bigtable and were acquainted with its successor, Spanner.[2] After leaving Google, they wanted to design and build something similar for companies outside of Google. By June 2015, the company had nine CockroachDB engineers.[3]
Spencer Kimball wrote the first iteration of the design in January 2014, and began the open-source project on GitHub in February 2014, allowing outside access and contributions.[8] It attracted a community of experienced contributors, with the co-founders actively supporting the project with conferences, networking and meet-ups. Its collaborations on GitHub earned it Open Source Rookie of the Year, a title awarded by Black Duck Software to open-source projects.[9]
In June 2015, the company closed $6.25 million in funding from Benchmark, Sequoia, Google Ventures, and FirstMark Capital.[2] Benchmark's general partner Peter Fenton was named to the company's board of directors.[3] Additional investors included Hortonworks chief executive Rob Bearden, CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi, and Cloudera co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher.[1]
In June 2019, Cockroach Labs announced that CockroachDB would change its license from the free software license Apache License 2.0 to a proprietary license.[10]
Cockroach Labs raised $55 million in a Series C round in August 2019, led by Altimeter Capital.[11]
Corporate affairs
Leadership
Cockroach Labs is managed by CEO and Co-Founder Spencer Kimball. Other key executives are:[12]
- Peter Mattis, CTO, Co-Founder
- Benjamin Darnell, Chief Architect, Co-Founder
- Jeff Miller, Chief Revenue Officer
- Nate Stewart, Chief Product Officer
- Lindsay Grenawalt, Chief People Officer
Features
The database is scalable, in that a single instance can scale from a single laptop to thousands of servers.[2]
CockroachDB is designed to run in the cloud and be resilient to failures.[13] The result is a database that is described as "almost impossible" to take down.[14][4] Even if multiple servers or an entire datacenter were to go offline, CockroachDB would keep services online.[15]
See also
References
- Ovide, Shira (June 4, 2015). "CockroachDB Scampers Off With $6.3 Million to Tackle Database Shortcomings". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Finley, Klint (June 4, 2015). "Ex-Googlers Get Millions to Help You Build the Next Google". Wired. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Novet, Jordan (June 4, 2015). "Peter Fenton's latest investment is a database startup called Cockroach". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Babcock, Charles (June 4, 2015). "CockroachDB: Ultimate in Database Survival". InformationWeek. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Darfler, Benjamin (August 29, 2014). "CockroachDB: A Scalable, Geo-Replicated, Transactional Datastore". InfoQ. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Metz, Cade (July 10, 2012). "Google Remakes Online Empire with 'Colossus'". Wired. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Wauters, Robin (July 28, 2009). "Steal! Ben Darnell Leaves Google Reader Team, Joins FriendFeed". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Ewbank, Kay (June 9, 2015). "CockroachDB Released". I Programmer. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Finleey, Klint (January 28, 2015). "These are the hottest new open-source projects right now". Wired. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Mattis, Peter; Darnell, Ben; Kimball, Spencer (June 4, 2019). "Why We're Relicensing CockroachDB". CockroachLabs.com. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Miller, Ron (August 6, 2019). "Cockroach Labs announces $55M Series C to battle industry giants". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- "Cockroach Labs is the company behind CockroachDB". Cockroach Labs. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Finley, Klint (July 22, 2014). "CockroachDB is the resilient cloud software built by ex-Googlers". Wired. Archived from the original on May 14, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Finley, Klint (July 21, 2014). "Out in the Open: Ex-Googlers Building Cloud Software That's Almost Impossible to Take Down". Wired. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
- Noto, Anthony (March 31, 2016). "Cockroach Labs crawls away with $20M from Benchmark, Google Ventures". BizJournals. Retrieved February 20, 2020.