Amazon Buys DuckDB Talent, Leaving Code Free for Rivals

Amazon has acquired DuckLabs, the team behind the popular open-source analytics engine DuckDB. The purchase price was not disclosed, but what's notable is that Amazon did not acquire the intellectual property or trademark rights to DuckDB.

The code remains under a permissive MIT license, allowing competitors like Microsoft and Google to continue using it without paying royalties. This means Amazon can't prevent rivals from building their own managed services on top of DuckDB.

AWS is a $42.23 billion quarterly business growing 37% year over year, and every new addition must justify itself against this base. However, the engine's free nature means the monetizable layer lies in everything around it, S3 storage integration, managed operations, security, billing, and tight coupling to existing services.

The optimistic view is that ecosystem expansion will drive growth, with a larger DuckDB user base translating into more workloads for Amazon to manage. The company's $496 billion backlog provides ample opportunities for AWS to convert AI demand into paid, high-margin core consumption.