Edge database startup pgEdge debuted in March, unveiling a fully distributed database based on PostgreSQL designed for the network edge. The startup raised a $9M seed round led by Sands Capital Ventures and Grotech Ventures.
pgEdge joins the competitive edge database market which includes startups like Fauna, Cockroach Labs, and Yugabyte. The one main advantage they have over the competition is its database product is based on PostgreSQL, the most popular database in 2023, according to a 2023 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, replacing MySQL for the top spot. One of the benefits of using a popular open-source product is that there is a huge market already using it. Â
Background
- Founded: 2022
- HQ: Alexandria, VA
- Funding: $9M in seed capital
- No. of Employees: ~20
- Co-founders: Phillip Merrick (CEO), Denis Lussier (CTO), and David Mitchell (COO)
- Product: Distributed PostgreSQL for the network edge
Complementary to CDNs
pgEdge has developed its platform to support multi-active (multi-master), multi-region, and multi-cloud use cases. The startup plans to work with the CDN ecosystem including the JAMStack startups like Vercel and Netlify, and others like Cloudflare, Fastly, and Akamai. Their approach brings database technology closer to the CDN edge, improving performance for stateful architectures.Â
What is Multi-Master
Multi-master in the context of PostgreSQL refers to a database architecture that allows multiple nodes or instances to act as masters simultaneously. This means that each master node can accept read and write requests independently, enabling distributed data processing and load balancing. With multi-master, changes made to the database can be synchronized across all the master nodes, ensuring data consistency and high availability.
This approach offers increased scalability and fault tolerance, making it an ideal choice for applications that require real-time updates and seamless failover capabilities. By leveraging multi-master functionality in PostgreSQL, users can achieve enhanced performance and reliability levels in their edge-based applications.Â
Products
- pgEdge Cloud: Fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) with a modern UI that simplifies the provisioning of database instances. The platform is available across the entire data center footprint of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
- pgEdge Platform: Downloadable version for private/on-prem cloud deployments, in which customers manage their own instances. This is ideal for companies in heavily regulated industries where security is top of mind.Â
Story
pgEdge describes itself as the following:
“To provide an open source, Postgres-based distributed database platform to meet the demands of today’s modern applications: always on, always global, and super responsive. We wanted to build on previous Postgres replication solutions but do so in an open and non-proprietary way. Our engineers have over 150 years of collective experience working on and with the Postgres database at companies like AWS, OpenSCG, and EnterpriseDB.”