--- title: Databricks acquires Electric, bringing PGlite and... description: Databricks has acquired Electric, the team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, folding them into Neon — the serverless Postgres company Databricks... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Databricks acquires Electric, bringing PGlite and real-time sync to Neon | daily.dev og:description: Databricks has acquired Electric, the team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, folding them into Neon — the serverless Postgres company Databricks... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ZCnXrWul4.png og:image:alt: Databricks acquires Electric, bringing PGlite and real-time sync to Neon og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Databricks acquires Electric, bringing PGlite and real-time sync to Neon **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Databricks has acquired Electric, the team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, folding them into Neon — the serverless Postgres company Databricks acquired earlier this year. PGlite, a full Postgres database compiled to WebAssembly, grew from 1 million to 13 million weekly downloads over the past year. The Electric sync engine keeps data synchronized between a central Postgres instance and clients like browsers, mobile apps, and AI agents. The acquisition is driven by agentic workloads: on Lakebase, AI agents create four times more databases than humans, average compute lives under 10 seconds, and some projects run over 500 branch iterations. All open-source projects (sync engine, PGlite, Durable Streams, TanStack DB) remain open source, but Electric Cloud is shutting down. The combined team plans to integrate WASM Postgres and real-time sync into Neon's platform. ## Content Databricks has acquired Electric, the small team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, and they're joining Neon — the serverless Postgres company Databricks bought last year and built its Lakebase service on top of. Stas Kelvich, a Neon co-founder, actually wrote the original proof of concept for PGlite, so there's a neat bit of history closing a loop here. If you haven't run into it, PGlite is a full Postgres database compiled to WebAssembly. It runs inside browser tabs, sandboxes, serverless functions — basically anywhere you can run WASM. It's grown fast: 1 million weekly downloads a year ago, 13 million now. The other piece, Electric sync, keeps a central Postgres database continuously synced with whatever's connected to it — browsers, mobile apps, or increasingly, AI agents. That last part is the real reason for this deal. AI agents use databases very differently than humans do. Databricks says agents running on Lakebase create about four times as many databases as human users do, with the average database instance living less than 10 seconds. Some projects have run through 500+ branch iterations. That's a completely different usage pattern than what most database infrastructure was built for, and it's pushing Databricks toward giving every agent something like its own lightweight, disposable Postgres instance that stays in sync with the source of truth. Combining PGlite's in-browser/in-sandbox Postgres with Electric's sync layer and Neon's serverless infrastructure, the idea is to let agents spin up local databases on demand, work against them with low latency, and sync back changes without round-tripping to a central server for every query. For agentic apps that hammer a database constantly, that could mean real savings on both speed and cost.``` Worth noting: the previously open-sourced projects — the sync engine, PGlite, Durable Streams, and TanStack DB — stay open source. Electric Cloud, the hosted product, is shutting down, so anyone using it will need to self-host or migrate elsewhere. I'll admit I'm curious rather than convinced here. The latency and cost argument makes sense on paper, but nobody's shown production-scale numbers yet. And handing every agent its own ephemeral database instance raises real questions about governance — who's tracking state across thousands of databases that live for seconds at a time? That's not a knock on the idea, just a reminder that "agents get their own local Postgres" sounds elegant until you're the one debugging why agent #4,382's branch diverged at 3am. ## Questions this post answers ### What happened to Electric and PGlite after the Databricks acquisition? Databricks acquired Electric, the team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, moving them into Neon, the serverless Postgres company Databricks previously acquired. The open-source projects—the sync engine, PGlite, Durable Streams, and TanStack DB—remain open source, but the hosted Electric Cloud product is shutting down, requiring existing users to self-host or migrate to another provider. _Track fast-moving acquisitions like this Postgres and AI-agent infrastructure shift on daily.dev._ ### Why would AI agents need their own disposable Postgres database instance? AI agents create databases at a much higher rate and lifespan than humans do—Databricks reports agents on Lakebase create about four times as many databases as human users, with average instances living less than 10 seconds and some projects running through 500+ branch iterations. Combining PGlite, Electric sync, and Neon aims to let agents spin up local databases synced to a source of truth without constant round-trips to a central server. _Developers weighing agent-driven database architectures can follow this trend on daily.dev._ ### Is Electric Cloud still available after the Databricks acquisition of Electric? No, Electric Cloud, the hosted product built on the Electric sync engine, is shutting down following the acquisition. Users of that hosted service need to self-host the open-source sync engine or migrate to an alternative, though the underlying open-source projects themselves remain available. _Anyone migrating off a shut-down hosted service can keep tabs on similar shifts via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Every AI Agent May Need PostgreSQL. Not Every Agent Should Own the Truth.](https://daily.dev/posts/every-ai-agent-may-need-postgresql-not-every-agent-should-own-the-truth--gponqmm61) · Planet PostgreSQL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Neon backend is GA: a complete set of primitives so agents can build](https://daily.dev/posts/the-neon-backend-is-ga-a-complete-set-of-primitives-so-agents-can-build-ueg1c5mpg) · Neon · 7 upvotes · 0 comments - [Electrifying Neon: building the realtime backend](https://daily.dev/posts/electrifying-neon-building-the-realtime-backend-c11v0znlh) · Neon · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql), [#webassembly](https://daily.dev/tags/webassembly), [#databricks](https://daily.dev/tags/databricks) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Databricks acquires Electric, bringing PGlite and real-time sync to Neon","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T16:46:54.974Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:24:28.692Z","description":"Databricks has acquired Electric, the team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, folding them into Neon — the serverless Postgres company Databricks...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/107050d7e9fd18f4ce783ec009ccb594?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/107050d7e9fd18f4ce783ec009ccb594?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"postgresql,webassembly,databricks","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Databricks acquires Electric, bringing PGlite and real-time sync to Neon"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/databricks-acquires-electric-bringing-pglite-and-real-time-sync-to-neon-zcnxrwul4#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What happened to Electric and PGlite after the Databricks acquisition?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Databricks acquired Electric, the team behind PGlite and the Electric sync engine, moving them into Neon, the serverless Postgres company Databricks previously acquired. 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