AWS bought DuckLabs—the company employing the core team behind DuckDB while DuckDB remains open source. What does the deal mean for AWS, MotherDuck, and the data stack building around DuckDB?
In this episode, @mehdio and @dumkydewilde unpack the acquisition, then connect Iceberg and Lance, SQL-first context for agents, Spotify's LLM evaluation funnel, AI-generated data lineage, CodexBar, WalGit, query optimizers, and the fight over whether SaaS products should ship their own agents or let users bring one.
All links on https://motherduck.com/podcast
00:00 Welcome to EXPLAIN ANALYZE
01:15 Why AWS bought DuckLabs
11:14 Analyze with Iceberg, serve with Lance
16:30 Why your agent should manage context through SQL
22:09 Better experiments with LLM evals
27:26 CodexBar makes AI usage visible
33:06 Architectural lessons for AI-powered data warehouses
38:10 WalGit: one Git server binary, backed by object storage
42:55 Query optimizers: the low-key MVP
47:13 Do users want your agent, or their own?
58:36 Wrap-up
#DuckDB #AWS #DuckLabs #DataEngineering #AIAgents #Iceberg #Lance #LLMEvals #MCP #DataPodcast
