And just like SPAC, MariaDB has gone public

Popular open source database supplier MariaDB has gone public through a SPAC deal. Its shares will be traded as MRDB on the New York Stock Exchange from today.

Update: Summary of first day’s trading added, December 19, 2022.

Its DB software was created in 2009 by some of the original MySQL devs after Oracle bought MySQL owner Sun Microsystems.

And now? MariaDB Plc is an Irish public limited company with dual headquarters in Redwood City, California, and Dublin, Ireland. It is the combination of MariaDB and Cayman Islands-based Angel Pond Holdings Corp (APHC), a special purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC) listed as POND on the NYSE. Its shares were trading at $11.26 on December 16, giving it a $373.71 million market capitalization. SPAC deals are said to be faster and less expensive than an IPO and have a more certain share valuation outcome.

Theodore Wang, MariaDB
Theodore Wang

Theodore Wang, chairman and CEO of APHC, has joined MariaDB’s board of directors. He said in a statement: “I am thrilled to bring MariaDB to the public market. The MariaDB database is one of the most popular and is proving to be a critical ingredient for businesses’ success in their cloud transformations. With MariaDB’s differentiated product offering and extensive experience building world-class databases, the company is positioned well to support the tidal wave of cloud database migrations that are only just beginning.”

Michael Howard continues as MariaDB CEO. He said: “Our customers increasingly come to us because they are struggling with the scalability and availability offered by the hyperscalers. With MariaDB SkySQL, we deliver better price and performance while freeing businesses from vendor lock-in with a multi-cloud offering.”

Wang is a former Goldman Sachs partner, retiring at the end of 2014. He founded Puissance Capital Management in 2015, with offices in New York and Hangzhou, and has an MBA, a physics PhD from the University of Minnesota, and a BS from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. 

MariaDB was founded in 2009 and developed its SkySQL open source database as an alternative to proprietary RDMSes such as Oracle. SkySQL is based on a fork of MySQL. It reported $34.7 million revenues for 2021, 13 percent more than in 2020, with $40.3 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a 31 percent year-on-year increase.

MariaDB ended its fiscal 2022 with over $50 million in ARR and more than 600 customers in 60-plus countries for its SkySQL relational database product. It says it has more than a billion users through Linux distributions and has been downloaded over one billion times.  

It has had a complicated funding history, with nine raising events across A and extended B and C rounds. The SPAC deal was announced in February and included $104 million in D-round funding and an $28 million PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity ) deal that took total funding past $227 million and gave MariaDB an implied value of $672 million. It will be most interesting to see the MRDB shares’ valuation on the NYSE when trading begins today.

Bootnote

MRDB was trading at $6.75 on Dec 19 just after 4pm ET today, having started trading at $11.55 giving them a 40 percent decline. Its market capitalisation on opening was The company’s market capitalization was $368 million, considerably less than the February 2022 valuation of $672 million.