MariaDB Enterprise Platform Wins AI TechAward for Best in Open Source AI
Award recognizes MariaDB’s innovation in open source with its vector search capability, part of the MariaDB Enterprise Platform 2025 release
MILPITAS, Calif. and DUBLIN – April 29, 2025 – MariaDB plc today announced that MariaDB Enterprise Platform has won a 2025 AI TechAward in the category of Open Source AI. The AI TechAwards are the definitive annual awards for the software industry recognizing outstanding design, engineering and innovation in developer technology across 20 categories.
Traditional search systems rely on matching keywords or structured values. While effective for the exact queries, they fall short in capturing meaning, intent or context – all essential capabilities for modern AI applications. Vector embedding search enables applications to retrieve results based on meaning and similarity, rather than exact matches. For example, a vector search system enables users to ask questions such as “find transactions similar to this one” or “retrieve documents related in meaning to this paragraph.” At the core of every AI-powered application is a vector database.
“Until recently, implementing vector search for AI applications meant introducing a separate vector database alongside your primary relational database, adding significant cost and complexity,” said Vikas Mathur, chief product officer, MariaDB plc. “With MariaDB Enterprise Platform, we’re giving developers a better choice. A simpler choice. Stay with your primary relational database and we’ll bring the power of vector search to you. By taking a native and truly open source approach to our MariaDB vector search implementation, we’re making this powerful capability accessible to all developers.”
MariaDB Enterprise Platform 2025, which launched at the beginning of the year, first introduced vector search in MariaDB Server. With this release, developers can build applications optimized for transactional, analytical and AI workloads all within the same database. Benchmarks of MariaDB’s vector search capabilities show that it outperforms PostgreSQL’s pgvector by 1.5x for queries per second (QPS) and 2x on index creation time.
“Developer tools and technology are leading the way for software developers and engineers to build the global technology ecosystem. MariaDB’s win showcases its leading role in growth and innovation across the software industry,” said Jonathan Pasky, executive producer of DevNetwork, producer of AI DevSummit and the 2025 AI TechAwards.
MariaDB’s database software has been downloaded over a billion times and is used extensively across both small and large organizations across the globe for endless use cases including banking, flight operations, 5G, prescription management and the public sector.
Award winners were selected from hundreds of nominees by the independent, expert-led DevNetwork Advisory Board, based on criteria including technical innovation; attracting notable attention and awareness in the software industry; and general regard and use by the developer, engineering and IT communities.
MariaDB will receive its 2025 AI TechAward at the AI TechAwards Ceremony & VIP Reception on May 28 during the AI DevSummit 2025, held May 28 and 29 in South San Francisco.
About MariaDB
MariaDB seeks to eliminate the constraints and complexity of proprietary databases, enabling organizations to reinvest in what matters most – rapidly developing innovative, customer-facing applications. Enterprises can depend on a single complete database for all their needs, that can be deployed in minutes for transactional, analytical, or hybrid use cases. Trusted by organizations such as Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, ServiceNow and Samsung – MariaDB delivers customer value without the financial burden of legacy database providers. For more information, please visit mariadb.com.
