Database management company MariaDB Plc said today it’s buying the Apache Ignite creator and in-memory computing technology developer GridGain Systems Inc. to build more robust infrastructure for artificial intelligence agents.

The company said the combination of its own technologies and GridGain will result in a single, high-velocity and hybrid cloud platform that’s able to handle analytical, transactional and AI workloads. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it will be finalized subject to customary closing conditions, MariaDB said.

GridGain is the creator and main developer of the open-source Apache Ignite project that’s focused on accelerated in-memory computing. Ignite is used to speed up real-time applications. It’s designed to sit atop standard databases, where it helps to accelerate their read and write performance.

It enables submillisecond data processing by storing more data for compute tasks — including AI — in a computer’s memory rather than relying on slower disk drives. MariaDB said this technology will be extremely useful as it looks to expand its agentic AI capabilities.

MariaDB Chief Executive Rohit de Souza explained that agentic AI systems that automate work on behalf of humans place different demands on data infrastructure. They need real-time access to massive datasets, and delays cannot be tolerated. But traditional disk-based architectures cannot keep up. By combining its database with GridGain’s in-memory data grid, MariaDB can provide a compelling alternative to traditional databases such as Oracle and the fragmented data services offered by cloud infrastructure providers.

“The rise of agentic workloads has placed unprecedented demands on enterprise infrastructure, causing requirements to explode and requiring a level of scale and submillisecond latency that traditional systems simply weren’t built to handle,” De Souza said.

GridGain Chief Technology Officer Lalit Ahuja agreed that latency has become a real problem for agentic workloads. “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,” he said.

The acquisition signals that MariaDB is gaining momentum following financial problems that derailed its bid to go public in December 2022. The company ended up being acquired by the private equity firm K1 Investment Management in September 2024, and since that time appears to have gone from strength to strength. In August it acquired its former subsidiary SkySQL, which it originally developed only to spin off as a separate business in 2023. SkySQL offers a cloud-based database-as-a-service that MariaDB said would provide more flexible deployment options for customers.

MariaDB followed that acquisition with the launch of MariaDB Enterprise Platform 2026, which features retrieval-augmented generation pipelines for developing agentic applications.

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