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The story
DataStax was built on the open source NoSQL database Apache Cassandra. Cassandra was initially developed internally at Facebook to handle large data sets across multiple servers, and was released as an Apache open source project in 2008. In 2010, Jonathan Ellis and Matt Pfeil left Rackspace, where they had worked with Cassandra, to launch Riptano in Austin, Texas. Ellis and Pfeil later renamed the company DataStax, and moved its headquarters to Santa Clara, California.
The company went on to create its own enterprise version of Cassandra, a NoSQL database called DataStax Enterprise (DSE).
In 2019, Chet Kapoor was named the company's new CEO, taking over from Billy Bosworth.
In May 2020, DataStax released Astra DB, a DBaaS for Cassandra applications. In November 2020, DataStax released K8ssandra, an open source distribution of Cassandra on Kubernetes. In December 2020, DataStax released Stargate, an open source data API gateway.
After acquiring streaming event vendor Kesque in January 2021, the company launched Luna Streaming, a data streaming platform for Apache Pulsar. DataStax then rebuilt the Kesque technology into Astra Streaming. The Astra Streaming cloud service became generally available on June 29, 2022. With the release, the company added API-level support for messaging tools Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ and Java Message Service, in addition to Apache Pulsar. Astra Streaming can connect to a larger data platform by utilizing DataStax's Astra DB cloud service.
Starting in 2023, DataStax began incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning into its platform. In January 2023, the company acquired Kaskada, developer of a platform that helps organizations use data for AI applications. DataStax made the formerly proprietary Kaskada technology open source, and integrated it into its Luna ML service, which was launched on May 4, 2023. With the acquisition, former Kaskada CEO Davor Bonaci was named DataStax chief technology officer and executive vice president.
On May 24, 2023, DataStax announced that it would be partnering with ThirdAI to bring large language models to DSE and AstraDB, to help developers develop generative AI applications.
In June 2023, the company announced the development of a GPT-based schema translator in its Astra Streaming cloud service. The Astra Streaming GPT Schema Translator uses generative AI to automatically generate schema mappings, to enable data integration and interoperability between multiple systems and data sources.
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On July 18, 2023, the company announced a partnership with Google to make semantic search available in its Astra DB cloud database for developers building generative AI applications.
On September 13, 2023, DataStax launched the LangStream open source project, which works with Astra DB and supports vector databases including Milvus and Pinecone. LangStream enables developers to better work with streaming data sources, using Apache Kafka technology and generative AI to help build event-driven architectures.
In November 2023, DataStax announced RAGStack, a simplified commercial offering for RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) based on LangChain and Astra DB vector search.
On February 25, 2025, IBM announced its intention to acquire DataStax.
On May 28, 2025, IBM announced that it had officially acquired DataStax.
From Wikipedia’s article on DataStax, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6