Strategic acquisition unites MariaDB’s mission-critical relational database with GridGain’s extreme in-memory speed to power the next generation of AI applications
MILPITAS, Calif. and DUBLIN – March 9, 2026 – MariaDB plc today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GridGain Systems, Inc., the pioneer of in-memory computing and creator of open source Apache Ignite. By merging MariaDB’s AI-ready relational database with GridGain’s scalable, in-memory power, MariaDB is setting a new industry standard: sub-millisecond data infrastructure for the agentic era.
Closing the AI Latency Gap
As enterprises move beyond passive chatbots toward agentic AI – autonomous systems that reason, plan and execute tasks – they are quickly becoming limited by traditional data architectures. AI agents require real-time access to massive datasets with zero friction. This acquisition bridges that gap by fusing:
- MariaDB’s reliability: Proven, ACID-compliant transactional integrity for the world’s most sensitive data, with native vector capability and AI support.
- GridGain’s speed: Extreme-scale and in-memory processing that eliminates the disk-drive tax on performance.
“The rise of agentic workloads has placed unprecedented demands on enterprise infrastructure, causing requirements to explode and requiring a level of scale and sub-millisecond latency that traditional systems simply weren’t built to handle,” said Rohit de Souza, CEO of MariaDB plc. “By uniting MariaDB’s platform with GridGain’s in-memory data grid, we are entering a new weight class. This enables us to provide a high-performance, scalable, open alternative to the rigid lock-in of Oracle and the fragmented complexity of hyperscalers.”
MariaDB is trusted by thousands of enterprises and millions of developers worldwide, providing a seamless upgrade path from Oracle MySQL and a simplified migration for those moving away from Oracle.
Powering the World’s Premier Data-Intensive Brands
With the acquisition, MariaDB will support an elite roster of global leaders who require always-on, always-fast data, including:
- Financial services: American Express, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, DBS, Deutsche Bank, RBC and State Street Corporation.
- Technology: HPE, Motorola Solutions and Red Hat.
- Telecommunications: Nokia, Optiva, Reliance Jio, Telecom Italia, Verizon and Virgin Media O2.
- Logistics and services: American Airlines, UPS, XPO Logistics and 24 Hour Fitness.
A Unified Platform for a Hybrid World
The agentic enterprise requires data that is instantaneous without compromising on durability or reliability. Hyperscalers often offer this as separate, disconnected services. The MariaDB-plus-GridGain integration will replace that fragmentation with a unified, hybrid-cloud platform capable of handling transactional, analytical and AI use cases in a single, high-velocity system – backed by reliable, enterprise support from a single company.
“Enterprises today cannot afford the latency introduced by siloed data architectures. With MariaDB and GridGain, enterprise customers will get a unified platform that provides them the best of both worlds, performance and scale without having to give up on durability,” says Lalit Ahuja, CTO of GridGain, Systems Inc. “The combined technology stack will unlock one of the key enablers for agentic enterprises: high-performance and reliable data processing that powers the next generation of AI applications.”
GridGain is a leading in-memory computing platform and is the original developer of the open source software Apache Ignite. GridGain enables companies to process massive amounts of data in real time. It provides security, high availability, distributed capability, management controls and integrations, helping enterprises achieve superior performance and scalability for their most demanding applications.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.
About MariaDB
MariaDB seeks to eliminate the constraints and complexity of proprietary databases, enabling organizations to reinvest in what matters most – rapidly developing innovative, customer-facing applications. Enterprises can depend on a single complete hybrid database platform for all their needs, that can be deployed in minutes for transactional, analytical, hybrid and AI use cases. Trusted by organizations such as Deutsche Bank, DBS, Nokia, Red Hat, Samsung and VirginMedia O2 – MariaDB delivers customer value without the financial burden of legacy database providers. For more information, please visit wp.mariadb.com.