Data Engineering Acquisitions

Roundup Sep 9, 2025

Hello data folks 👋

Consolidation in the data engineering market accelerated through 2025 with 9+ major acquisitions, including Snowflake acquiring Neon for $1B and Fivetran buying Census for ~$250M. The modern data stack is evolving into unified platforms as vendors move beyond point solutions.

Key deals span the entire pipeline: dbt Labs acquired SDF Labs, Datadog bought Metaplane for observability, and Hex consolidated analytics with Hashboard. Redis entered real-time processing by acquiring Decodable.

Are we approaching the end of the "best-of-breed" era? Integration complexity and vendor fatigue are driving platform consolidation.

Source: Second Brain

ASML becomes Mistral AI’s top shareholder after leading latest funding round

Reuters | September 7, 2025 | 3 minute read

ASML invested $1.5B in Mistral AI's $2B Series C, becoming the top shareholder and valuing the French AI company at $11.7B, making it Europe's most valuable AI startup.

The Dutch chipmaking equipment giant sees strategic value in Mistral's data analytics capabilities (maybe to improve its $180M EUV lithography systems?). ASML's investment specifically aims to strengthen European tech sovereignty and reduce reliance on U.S./Chinese AI models.

Why language models hallucinate

OpenAI | September 5, 2025 | 7 minute read

OpenAI’s latest research shows language models hallucinate because standard evaluations reward guessing over acknowledging uncertainty. Their analysis of GPT-5 vs older models reveals a key trade-off: GPT-5 achieves 22% accuracy with 26% error rate, while o4-mini gets 24% accuracy but 75% error rate.

The root cause lies in accuracy-focused benchmarks that penalize "I don't know" responses. Models learn to guess confidently rather than express uncertainty, similar to multiple-choice tests where wrong guesses still offer better expected scores than leaving answers blank.

OpenAI argues the solution isn't just adding uncertainty-aware tests, but reworking primary evaluation metrics to penalize confident errors more than abstentions. Current scoreboards create perverse incentives that persist even as models become more capable.

Couchbase quarterly financial report

Couchbase | September 4, 2025 | 4 hour read

The NoSQL database vendor’s Q2 filing details its pivot to an “AI-ready” data platform. It positions its native vector search and other AI capabilities directly against legacy relational and first-gen NoSQL databases.

The report highlights a product roadmap focused on GenAI workloads, including features like auto-vectorization and AI model hosting. This strategic focus is backed by a 9% quarter-over-quarter increase in R&D spending to $19.0M and a 4% YoY growth in engineering headcount, indicating investment in its fast-growing Capella DBaaS.

Three More Things

Is there any use-case for AI that actually benefits DEs at a high level? (Reddit)

I am a DE who is happy and likes their work. AMA (Reddit)

Data professionals who moved to business-facing roles - how did you handle the communication shift

That’s the brief.