ClickHouse, a big-name database startup, has reportedly purchased PeerDB to improve change data capture and replication for Postgres, ClickHouse has clients like Microsoft and Spotify.
From its inception, and even before that, when Yandex supported it as an open-source initiative, ClickHouse has gained recognition as a live data repository for big businesses. Deutsche Bank, eBay, Fastly, GitLab, HubSpot, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Spotify are among the customers on its list.
Although ClickHouse already had a Postgres connector for data migration, PeerDB provides speed enhancements up to 10x and additional specialized features not available before in ClickHouse.
PeerDB Background
Srirampur expressed his desire for PeerDB to prioritize "quality over quantity," leading the team to concentrate specifically on creating a specialized ETL tool for Postgres. This involves transferring large amounts of data from a Postgres database to a system like ClickHouse, as well as implementing a change data capture system to keep the databases synchronized.
It appears that most PeerDB clients primarily relied on Postgres as the main data source for their data warehouse. Perhaps it is not unexpected, as those clients are more inclined to select a platform such as PeerDB, nonetheless, ClickHouse also recognized a rising demand for a similar tool.
The current open-source components of PeerDB will continue to be open-source, with no modifications to their licenses. ClickHouse will release the high-quality Helm charts for PeerDB's premium enterprise solution as open source as well.
The price of the acquisition was not revealed by the two companies, however, it is important to mention that PeerDB secured $3.6 million in seed funding in late 2023, with 8VC as the lead investor.
Startup Updates
As for other startup news, Arjun Pillai, ex-chief data officer at ZoomInfo, recently secured $15 million in a Series A funding round for his new venture, DocketAI. The startup, an AI-driven sales tool, aims to enhance the efficiency of sales professionals by saving them time.
Pillai noticed that sales engineers at ZoomInfo, who are experts in technical sales, were getting involved in multiple discussions with potential clients, even those who did not need their technical expertise. They often receive challenging yet typical questions from many account executives.
Pillai stated that having a sales engineer present on every call is expensive, highly inefficient, and consumes a lot of time. Pillai saw an opportunity to develop an artificial intelligence sales engineer. DocketAI can help non-technical salespeople write RFPs and other technical papers faster and more easily.
As per Pillai, DocketAI allows sales engineers to focus on more engaging, complex, and strategic corporate opportunities instead of displacing them.
For the AI of the startup to work, over 100 applications that are used by Docket's software clients need to be integrated, ingested, and indexed. Pillai clarified that the company does not train its AI using enterprise data. Docket operates like a search engine for structured and unstructured business information, similar to Glean and Atlassian's Rovo.