# Materialize

> Materialize is a New York-based data infrastructure company that builds a streaming SQL database. It continuously ingests data from operational systems, incrementally maintains the results of complex SQL queries as always-fresh materialized views, and serves them with low latency. Built on the open-source Timely Dataflow and Differential Dataflow engines and written in Rust, Materialize looks and behaves like Postgres, letting engineers use standard SQL to power real-time analytics, automation, personalization, fraud detection, and - more recently - a live context layer for AI agents and applications.

- **Founded:** 2019
- **Headquarters:** New York, New York, United States
- **Founders:** Arjun Narayan (Co-founder, former CEO (ex-Cockroach Labs)), Frank McSherry (Co-founder & Chief Scientist (creator of Differential/Timely Dataflow, co-inventor of Differential Privacy))
- **Team size:** ~77 employees
- **Products:** Materialize (Cloud), Materialize (Self-Managed / Emulator), Live context layer for AI agents, dbt adapter
- **Notable:** Raised over $100M total from top-tier investors (Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Redpoint)., Commercialized Differential Dataflow / Timely Dataflow - research originating from Microsoft Research's Naiad project., Delivered the first standard-SQL interface for streaming data with full multi-way join support.

## Products & services

- **Materialize (Cloud)** — Cloud-native operational data warehouse / streaming SQL database. Ingests from databases, message brokers and SaaS sources, incrementally maintains SQL views, and serves millisecond-latency reads with strong consistency. Postgres wire-compatible.
- **Materialize (Self-Managed / Emulator)** — Self-hosted deployment option and a local emulator for running Materialize in a customer's own environment or on a laptop for development.
- **Live context layer for AI agents** — Positioning and capability set that links real-time data products into a continuously updated context graph agents and services can query directly, keeping RAG embeddings and feature lookups fresh.
- **dbt adapter** — Adapter that lets analytics engineers define and manage streaming transformations in Materialize using dbt models and standard SQL.

## Achievements

- Raised over $100M total from top-tier investors (Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Redpoint).
- Commercialized Differential Dataflow / Timely Dataflow - research originating from Microsoft Research's Naiad project.
- Delivered the first standard-SQL interface for streaming data with full multi-way join support.
- Re-architected from a single Rust binary (2020) into a cloud-native distributed system (2022).
- Adopted by name-brand companies including Notion, Ryder and General Mills.

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Repositioned around a 'live context layer for agents and apps,' targeting AI agent data access and fresh RAG context in addition to traditional real-time analytics.
- **2024-04** — Nate Stewart (formerly Cockroach Labs) became CEO; co-founder Frank McSherry continues as Chief Scientist.
- **2022-10** — Launched the cloud-native, horizontally scalable version of Materialize, moving beyond the original single-binary architecture.

## Links

- Website: https://materialize.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/materializeinc
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/materializeinc
- GitHub: https://github.com/MaterializeInc/materialize
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MaterializeInc

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/materialize
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-19