What a difference 2 years makes: MariaDB buys back SkySQL

It's less than two years since MariaDB spun out SkySQL, but it's already unspinning the database-as-a-service outfit, which has since been marinated in AI sauce.

"Acquiring SkySQL helps accelerate plans and adds further innovation to MariaDB Cloud," MariaDB CEO Rohit de Souza said in a statement on Tuesday. Terms for the acquisition were not announced, though MariaDB had retained an equity stake in SkySQL.

MariaDB launched SkySQL in 2020, giving customers a cloud-based way to use its open source database, a venerable fork of MySQL. But by late 2023, after a rocky public debut, the company cut jobs and offloaded SkySQL and its PostgreSQL-compatible front end, Xpand.

The move confounded analysts, who saw momentum in the database-as-a-service market and feared that MariaDB may be hobbling its future growth, with one warning us at the time that the products were "the company's best drivers for future growth." But ...