The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Strategic decision · 2022–2025
Kùzu bets embedded open-source graph DB beats server databases; Apple buys it in 2025
A Waterloo research team's embeddable, open-source graph database earns an Apple acquisition — all shares bought, team hired, repo archived in October 2025
Kùzu
What the business is
Kùzu Inc. was a Kitchener-Waterloo startup spun out of University of Waterloo research led by Semih Salihoğlu, an associate professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science. It built an embeddable, open-source graph database management system focused on query speed, scalability and ease of use — a DuckDB or SQLite for graph workloads rather than another database server to operate.
How it started
The project began as research in Salihoğlu's Data Systems Group at Waterloo. On 2022-11-15 the team open-sourced Kùzu with a Show HN framing it as an embeddable graph database management system like DuckDB or SQLite — an early release under a permissive license that drew modest initial attention (42 points, 12 comments). In 2023 they incorporated Kùzu Inc. to commercialize the embedded technology, with Salihoğlu as CEO and research-group students Ziyi Chen, Xiyang Feng, Guodong Jin and Chang Liu as co-founders, later joined by early engineers. Their bet was that most teams do not want to run a graph database; they want graph capability embedded inside the application they already operate.
What happened
Development stayed open, and the team pushed the embedded story to its logical end by compiling the engine to WebAssembly. A 2025-03-10 Show HN, In-Browser Graph RAG with Kuzu-WASM and WebLLM, demonstrated a fully in-browser chatbot retrieving from a graph via text-to-Cypher translation; it drew 158 points and 29 comments, and the roadmap added a vector index for RAG. The company remained small and research-flavored rather than becoming a database vendor with a sales force, which kept the technology cheap to evaluate and easy for other products to absorb.
How it ended up
On 2025-10-09, according to a disclosure Apple filed with the European Union under the Digital Markets Act, Apple agreed through a subsidiary to buy all shares of Kùzu and hire select employees. The GitHub repository was archived the next day and the company website was taken down. The deal became public on 2026-02-10 when AppleInsider spotted the EU filing and BetaKit, MacRumors, The Verge and the University of Waterloo reported it. Terms were not disclosed, Apple did not comment on its rationale, and observers speculated the graph engine could serve FileMaker, Freeform, iWork or Apple's services.
Background
Kùzu Inc. was a Kitchener-Waterloo startup spun out of University of Waterloo research led by Semih Salihoğlu, an associate professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science. It built an embeddable, open-source graph database management system focused on query speed, scalability and ease of use — a DuckDB or SQLite for graph workloads rather than another server to run.
The project began as research in Salihoğlu's Data Systems Group. On 2022-11-15 the team open-sourced Kùzu with a Show HN framing it as an embeddable GDBMS like DuckDB or SQLite, and in 2023 incorporated Kùzu Inc. with Salihoğlu as CEO and research-group students Ziyi Chen, Xiyang Feng, Guodong Jin and Chang Liu as co-founders. Their bet: most teams do not want to run a graph database; they want graph capability embedded in the application they already operate.
Development stayed open under a permissive license, and the team pushed the embedded story to its limit by compiling the engine to WebAssembly. A 2025-03-10 Show HN, In-Browser Graph RAG with Kuzu-WASM and WebLLM, showed a fully in-browser chatbot retrieving from a graph through text-to-Cypher, drawing 158 points and 29 comments, with a vector index for RAG on the roadmap.
On 2025-10-09 Apple agreed through a subsidiary to buy all Kùzu shares and hire select employees, per an EU Digital Markets Act disclosure; the repository was archived the next day and the website went offline. The deal became public on 2026-02-10 when AppleInsider spotted the filing. Terms were undisclosed, Apple did not explain its rationale, and observers guessed the engine could serve FileMaker, Freeform, iWork or Apple's services.
What has to be true
- Embedded distribution removed the sales cycle: developers could adopt the library in an afternoon, so the technology spread on code quality rather than vendor marketing.
- The SQLite and DuckDB framing made the category instantly legible to engineers who knew exactly what operating a server graph database costs.
- Keeping the engine research-grade fast on huge graphs gave an acquirer a codebase and a team, not a product with customers to migrate.
- A small, quiet company was cheap to buy and easy to wind down publicly — the pattern Apple prefers for acquiring technology and talent.
What can be applied
An embeddable tool can stay small in public yet become strategically valuable: the same open code that made Kùzu easy to try is what let Apple absorb the whole company quietly.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-05, Kùzu the company is gone: the acquisition closed with terms undisclosed, the kuzudb/kuzu repository is archived, and the website has been offline since late 2025. Apple has not said what it plans to do with the technology; speculation pointed at FileMaker Pro, Freeform, iWork or graph features inside Apple services. For the open-source community the project stopped at its October 2025 archive state, though the WASM demos and forks remain. The University of Waterloo announced the acquisition as a research commercialization milestone on 2026-02-24.
Sources
- Apple strikes deal to acquire Canadian database software startup Kuzu
- Apple Acquires New Database App
- Waterloo-based graph database start-up Kùzu acquired by Apple
- Apple quietly acquired the graph database company Kuzu late last year
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