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Cockroach Labs was founded in 2015 by Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis and Ben Darnell. The three previously worked at Google, and developed Viewfinder, a photo-sharing platform acquired by Square in 2013. CockroachDB 1.0 was released in May 2017.
As the name implies, the aim behind Cockroach DB is to be hard to kill. The database wants to emulate the cockroaches staying power through replication and distribution. CockroachDB is distributed across geographically diverse data centers to increase resilience.
The geographically distributed database supports multi-master capability, giving databases the ability to read and write data on a local replica without having to access a central master. Replication in this manner protects the database from downtime, lost data and increases availability.
Cockroach Labs launched Cockroach DB as open source software with their code under Apache License version 2. They launched a managed service with gated features under an enterprise license. In 2019, in response to a rise in well-positioned companies integrating open-sourced software, Cockroach Labs changed their licensing terms to prohibit anyone from offering a commercial version of CockroachDB without a license.
The geographically distributed database could increase local compliance over data privacy and data localization concerns.
In June 2015 Cockroach Labs announced a funding of $6.25 million. The round, led by Benchmark – whose Peter Fenton joined Cockroach Labs board– included Techammer, Sequoia Capital, Moisey Uretsky, GV, Florian Leibert and FirstMark Capital.
In March 2016 Cockroach Labs raised $20 million. Index Ventures led the round which included Benchmark, FirstMark Capital, GV and Work-Bench.
In May 2017 Cockroach Labs raised $27 million. Redpoint led the round, which included Benchmark, GV, Index Ventures and FirstMark Capital.
In August 2019 Cockroach Labs raised $55 million. Altimeter Capital, Tiger Global Management and GV led the round, which included Benchmark, Index Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Redpoint and Work-Bench.
