# Nikita Shamgunov

> Nikita Shamgunov is a database engineer, founder and investor based in Los Altos, California. He co-founded MemSQL, later renamed SingleStore, served as its original CTO and became CEO in 2017. After engineering roles at Microsoft and Facebook, he later co-founded serverless Postgres company Neon with Heikki Linnakangas and Stas Kelvich. Neon joined Databricks in 2025; Shamgunov is now a vice president of engineering at Databricks. His recent work focuses on database infrastructure and backends for developers and AI agents.

- **Role:** Vice President of Engineering at Databricks
- **Organizations:** Databricks, Neon, SingleStore (formerly MemSQL), Khosla Ventures (former investing role), Facebook (former employer), Microsoft (former employer)
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** PhD in computer science, ITMO University
- **Known for:** Co-founded SingleStore as its original CTO and later served as CEO., Co-founded Neon, the serverless Postgres company acquired by Databricks in 2025., Medalist in ACM international programming competitions.

## Career timeline

- **Before 2011** — Worked on Microsoft SQL Server, then on core infrastructure at Facebook.
- **2011** — Co-founded MemSQL with Eric Frenkiel; served as CTO. The company joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2011 batch.
- **2017** — Became CEO of MemSQL.
- **2019** — Raj Verma joined MemSQL as co-CEO.
- **2020** — Verma became sole CEO in September; MemSQL was renamed SingleStore in October.
- **2021** — Co-founded Neon with Heikki Linnakangas and Stas Kelvich.
- **2022** — Announced Neon’s public technical preview on June 15.
- **2024** — Neon became generally available in April; Replit Agent’s launch in September changed Neon’s usage patterns.
- **2025** — Neon announced its acquisition by Databricks on May 14 and subsequently joined the company.
- **2026** — Appeared publicly as Databricks VP of Engineering and continued building the Neon backend platform.

## Achievements

- Co-founded SingleStore as its original CTO and later served as CEO.
- Co-founded Neon, the serverless Postgres company acquired by Databricks in 2025.
- Medalist in ACM international programming competitions.
- Awarded patents in database technology.
- Co-author of the app.build research paper on application generation and structured validation environments.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Spoke with WorkOS founder Michael Grinich at init() on October 7 about agent distribution, Neon and the Databricks acquisition; recap published October 19.
- **2026-08** — Announced Electric joining the Neon team within Databricks, bringing PGlite and real-time sync expertise.
- **2026-01** — A revised version of the app.build paper listing Shamgunov as co-author was posted to arXiv.
- **2025-12** — Co-authored Databricks’ Lakebase holiday update on autoscaling, branching and operational capabilities.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikitashamgunov/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/nikitabase

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/nikita-shamgunov
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-25