# Dylan Cui

> Dylan Cui is a co-founder of PingCAP, the company behind TiDB - one of the world's most widely adopted open-source distributed SQL databases. A software engineer by trade, Dylan co-built TiDB from scratch starting in 2015 after experiencing firsthand the pain of database scaling at scale while working at Wandoujia. PingCAP has raised over $341 million and TiDB has more than 33,000 GitHub stars, serving thousands of enterprises globally across fintech, gaming, and e-commerce.

- **Role:** Co-founder at PingCAP
- **Organizations:** PingCAP, TiDB
- **Nationality:** Chinese
- **Education:** Information Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
- **Known for:** Co-founded PingCAP, now valued at approximately $3 billion, Co-built TiDB, an open-source distributed SQL database with 33,000+ GitHub stars, Helped grow PingCAP to 600+ employees across multiple countries

## Career timeline

- **2005** — Enrolled at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications to study Information Engineering
- **2012** — Graduated and joined Sogou as a Software Engineer in ads infrastructure
- **2013** — Joined Wandou Labs (Wandoujia) as Senior Software Engineer in ads infrastructure; worked on one of China's largest Redis clusters
- **2015** — Co-founded PingCAP in April alongside Max Liu and Edward Huang; began building TiDB open-source distributed SQL database
- **2015** — TiDB first open-source release in September 2015
- **2016** — PingCAP raised $5M Series A from Yunqi Partners
- **2017** — TiDB 1.0 GA launched in October 2017; PingCAP raised $15M Series B
- **2018** — PingCAP raised $50M Series C; began expansion into North American market
- **2020** — TiKV (TiDB's storage engine) became a CNCF Graduated project; PingCAP raised Series D
- **2021** — PingCAP Series D extended to $270M total; company valued at $3 billion

## Achievements

- Co-founded PingCAP, now valued at approximately $3 billion
- Co-built TiDB, an open-source distributed SQL database with 33,000+ GitHub stars
- Helped grow PingCAP to 600+ employees across multiple countries
- Contributed to TiKV achieving CNCF Graduated status in 2020
- Helped raise over $341 million in total funding for PingCAP
- Built TiDB into a globally adopted database used by thousands of enterprises in fintech, gaming, and e-commerce
- Co-architected HTAP (Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing) capabilities for TiDB

## Latest updates

- **2021-07** — PingCAP completed Series D funding round totaling $270M, valuing the company at approximately $3 billion
- **2020-11** — TiKV, the underlying storage engine of TiDB co-built by the PingCAP team, achieved CNCF Graduated project status

## Links

- Website: https://pingcap.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-cui-39111467
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/pingcap2015

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/dylan-cui
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-27