[HN Gopher] A16Z-backed data firms Fivetran, dbt Labs to merge i...
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A16Z-backed data firms Fivetran, dbt Labs to merge in all-stock
deal
Author : mjirv
Score : 105 points
Date : 2025-10-13 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| pawelduda wrote:
| Thoughts on possible implications for users in foreseeable
| future? We built a lot using dbt and can't really think of going
| back or switching to alternatives
| Kiro wrote:
| What's the lock-in?
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'm wondering too. We run dbt on-prem. Worst that could
| happen is we don't get any more free updates. But we have the
| software and it will continue to run.
| hn1986 wrote:
| the concern is that dbt-core will become stagnant.
| mjirv wrote:
| It basically already has since they started developing
| dbt Fusion, so in that respect this probably doesn't
| change much.
|
| I expect they'll keep developing Fusion but possibly as
| even more of a commercial-only offering than it already
| was.
| globular-toast wrote:
| What's the problem specifically? Are you banking on some
| future features? Can't fix the bugs yourself? Worried it
| won't be compatible with future data warehouses?
|
| I know people don't like it these days, but you can just
| continue to run old software.
| vovavili wrote:
| dbt in particular is effectively useless without
| maintained and up-to-date connectors to your particular
| database.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The cloud component is probably sticky if you have come to
| rely on those parts.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Are you using their cloud offering or just the software itself?
| pawelduda wrote:
| Just the software
| rockostrich wrote:
| Fivetran isn't really much of a transformation layer so this is
| likely just a move to lock-in customers of both companies by
| upselling an ingestion/transformation layer to existing
| customers.
|
| The bigger question mark to me is that Fivetran recently
| acquired Tobiko, the company behind a dbt competitor SQLMesh.
| The Tobiko team said their focus has been on dbt-compatibility
| because a lot of Fivetran customers use dbt for their
| transformation layer. I fear it may have just been a way to get
| rid of competition leading up to this deal. I can't imagine
| Fivetran spent a ton of money just to have 2 products that do
| very similar things.
|
| We use both open-source SQLMesh as well as their cloud offering
| Tobiko Cloud. Following the acquisition, we were annoyed that
| focus was going to go to dbt compatibility because there was a
| bunch of stuff on their roadmap that would help us that was now
| deprioritized. Thankfully, they still offer great support to us
| and delivered a few features that have given us some quality of
| life improvements. With this announcement, I'm worried we're
| going to end up being forced to migrate to dbt...
| hisnameisjimmy wrote:
| Full disclosure: I am a PM at Fivetran who is very excited
| about this.
|
| We are fully committed to open source dbt and don't want to
| build a 'walled garden'. Interoperability is one of the key
| value propositions of both Fivetran and dbt. While I'm biased,
| I think the main implications for users is that their favorite
| tooling will be with one vendor who cares about what makes them
| great.
|
| You can read a bit more here:
| https://www.fivetran.com/blog/the-era-of-open-data-infrastru...
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| This smells like self-dealing on the part of A16z.
| jonas21 wrote:
| How so? It sounds like a pretty normal merger to me.
| guywithahat wrote:
| Maybe, but now they could IPO confidentially as a tech company
| with high revenue with a multi-billion dollar valuation, which
| sort of sounds like their end goal
| swyx wrote:
| those are heavy accusations to toss around and that the title
| would like you to conclude, but doesnt pass the basic smell
| check of fivetran's founders still having control of the
| company. dbt was the hottest company in the data world 3 years
| ago and is valuable.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You're so close to the subject of the accusation by
| association, that your commentary actually makes their
| accusation stronger.
| drob518 wrote:
| That was the first thought I had, too. When the dot-com bubble
| burst, every VC was slapping companies together to try to
| forestall the black mark of having a "failure" and balance
| sheet write off that they would have to show the LPs
| (investors) in the next LP meeting. It got so bad that someone
| described it as "tying together two rocks and seeing if they
| will float." Needless to say, most didn't. So, this makes me
| wonder if we're seeing the first signs of the bursting of the
| AI bubble which we all know we're in the middle of. Maybe it's
| legit and there is real "synergy" or whatever, but the fact
| that this is two companies within the same VC portfolio makes
| it suspect.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| is this why Reddit and Infogami merged?
| drob518 wrote:
| I don't know
| stretchwithme wrote:
| That happened at a company I was at 8 years ago. It acquired
| a company also owned by the major investor. Layoffs started
| with a month. They whole thing shut down within 6 months.
| barrrrald wrote:
| VCs often help companies find homes within their portfolios
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| Last month Fivetran also acquired Tobiko, maker of SQLMesh, a dbt
| alternative. Looks like they are going all in.
| https://www.fivetran.com/press/fivetran-acquires-tobiko-data...
| rockostrich wrote:
| And paying to eliminate competition along with way...
| swyx wrote:
| > Data startups Fivetran and dbt Labs will merge in an all-stock
| deal, creating a combined data infrastructure company with nearly
| $600 million in annual revenue, the two companies told Reuters.
|
| last update we had was Fivetran had 200m in 2023 and 300m in 2024
| (https://www.fivetran.com/press/fivetran-surpasses-300m-arr-d...)
|
| if Fivetran continued at same pace in 2025, that means it's at
| 400m ish and dbt was at 200m. not bad for dbt.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| It's the right move if they want to IPO.
|
| The "modern data stack" market excluding of data warehouse / data
| lake is pretty small. Fivetran is biggest one and still under
| $500M in revenue, so they're acquiring other parts and starting
| to offer their own datalake (managed Iceberg).
|
| Snowflake started offering fivetran-like connectors a couple
| years ago and I expect they'll double down there. Same with
| Databricks. Microsoft has Fabric now, but the reviews have been
| terrible (my experience included).
|
| I think they'll each ultimately have a full data stack.
|
| If you don't want to wait, we built a modern-data-stack-in-a-box
| at Definite (https://www.definite.app/).
| gregw2 wrote:
| Interesting. It makes sense with Fivetran and dbt being so
| complimentary, ingestion (Fivetran) vs transformation (DBT).
|
| But I still feel like I'm missing, in DBT, capabilities for DB
| DDL/DML deployment (which I've done from Liquibase in DBT) for a
| fully CICD modern data stack. Preconditions, post-conditions,
| only-deploy-changed-code capabilities... Am I missing something
| in DBT?
| clkao wrote:
| There's the slim ci best practice and ways to deploying only
| what's changed in dbt, but these require some config and
| underlying knowledge.
|
| Verifying schema changes pre-production is only part of the
| issues, figuring out the actual data changes caused by code
| logic changes is trickier.
| knes wrote:
| Fivetran acquired Census (reverse-etl) & Tobiko (dbt
| alternative).
|
| I wonder who's next to really consolidate their platform play and
| compete with the old legacy MDM provider like Informatica. Data
| Observability or Catalog like Monte Carlo and Atlan. The whole
| Modern Data Stack has either died, acquired or merged by now.
| Wonder what's missing for Fivetran to IPO too.
|
| I also wonder what this merge means for Airbyte who raised 150m
| at 1.5b in 2023.
| mfdupuis wrote:
| Observability is a good guess, but I'd venture to guess that
| the conversations going on internally are about how to capture
| value across the entire stack. I wouldn't be surprised if we
| hear about them acquiring either a database/warehouse company
| and/or an analytics solution. Or vice versa, them getting
| acquired by a bigger player that wants to offer more connectors
| and data modeling functionality.
| karakanb wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of a dbt alternative, Bruin.
| (https://github.com/bruin-data/bruin)
|
| I think consolidation in the space has been coming for quite some
| time now and this merger only confirms what us, along with many
| others, have been saying: the data tooling is in a miserable
| state and we had to glue together a bunch of different tools that
| don't work with each other.
|
| At this point, I think it is quite obvious that Fivetran is going
| for Snowflake/Databricks's market share. They own the ingestion
| for many companies already, and they will offer a managed data
| lake product in order to compete with the data giants. By owning
| the means of bringing the data in (Fivetran) as well as the
| transformation layer (dbt/sqlmesh) they will aim to get ahead of
| Snowflakes of the world.
|
| I think it'll be a win for the data community if they maintain
| and continue investing into the existing tooling, as they are
| running in quite a few places already, especially dbt core
| running in a self-managed way. I certainly hope they won't try to
| squeeze revenue for the sake of it from their combined users.
|
| It's an interesting time to be in the space, and it feels great
| to be one of the few independent players in the market.
| npalli wrote:
| How will Fivetran and dbt who are detested for being overpriced
| and underfeatured in the segment they are supposed to be good
| at (ETL/ELT) be taking on being a datalake? That's orders of
| magnitude more complex in engineering and operating and they
| have no experience. This is really a play to consolidate, get
| rid of duplicate functions and provide a better experience to
| customers.
| karakanb wrote:
| This seems to undermine the engineering muscle these
| companies have. Fivetran is well-capable of building a query
| engine, and with this merger, they also get access to SDF's
| query engine. They have the engineering capabilities, as well
| as the capital to attract the talent where needed.
|
| I would not underestimate any of these players in the space.
| taude wrote:
| With Snowflake's new OpenFlow offering based on Apache Nifi,
| Snowflake will be able to become Fivetran faster than Fivetran
| can become Snowflake/Databricks, though....
|
| Thoughts?
| karakanb wrote:
| OpenFlow feels like an attempt at keeping customers within
| Snowflake boundaries, and while it might work for some, I see
| no way Snowflake being able to keep up with the data
| integration needs unless they allow another way of extending
| their capabilities other than pre-built integrations.
|
| On the other hand, I do agree with you that it is quite a big
| challenge for Fivetran to try and become Snowflake.
| moltar wrote:
| They also acquired Census recently - reverse ETL.
| Thicken2320 wrote:
| They specifically mention the dbt-core will remain open source
| and will be supported. However this type of consolidation will
| very likely bring increased prices.
|
| I hope Fivetran alternatives like dlt remain open source.
| tomwphillips wrote:
| Not that surprising. How many millions has been piled into dbt
| Labs?
|
| dbt Cloud is an uncompelling product. Fivetran is convenient but
| absurdly expensive. Now dbt core development is just another
| marketing cost for Fivetran.
|
| I'd really love to see everyone move on from the "modern data
| stack". dbt is a sticking plaster to a problem caused by orgs
| aggressively adopting SaaS products and choosing distributed
| software architectures without any thought about how to deal with
| the problem that your data models don't fit together and data is
| stored in 30 different places.
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