Private equity types to snap up NoSQL biz Couchbase

$1.5 billion offered for database company valued at $1.2 billion four years ago

Document database company Couchbase is set to be bought by a private equity biz in all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.5 billion.

After building a user-base which includes Comcast, GE, and UPS, Couchbase reached terms with Haveli Investments late last week. In 2021, the company, which has introduced SQL-like features on its multi-modal NoSQL database, raised $200 million in its IPO, valuing it at around $1.2 billion.

Sumit Pande, senior managing director at Haveli Investments, said: "The data layer in enterprise IT stacks is continuing to increase in importance as a critical enabler of next-gen AI applications. Couchbase's innovative data platform is well positioned to meet the performance and scalability demands of the largest global enterprises."

The buyout is expected to complete in the second half of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Emerging from Membase, Couchbase Server is designed to appeal to developers with a distributed multi-model NoSQL document-oriented database software package optimized for modern, interactive applications.

Notable Couchbase employees include Donald Chamberlin, who co-authored the ubiquitous database language SQL in the 1970s. In the role, he is backing a new query language designed to overcome some of the shortcomings of SQL.

In 2023, Couchbase added a columnar side-car to boost analytics performance for users who want more insight into their real-time data. Only available as a package with the main DBaaS, the in-memory analytics system offers support for Tableau and PowerBI for analytic development and visualization.

In 2021, the NoSQL database began to support multi-statement SQL transactions and an approach to building schema-like structures into the database, allowing it to support multiple applications from the same data. It said the "multi-statement SQL transactions," allows statements that commit or roll back together. Couchbase moved to the license BSL 1.1 in March that year. ®