--- title: Prefect just bought Dagster, another big Airflow rival —... description: Prefect has announced the acquisition of Dagster, uniting two of the biggest Apache Airflow rivals under one roof. The deal keeps Dagster's products, pricing,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/prefect-just-bought-dagster-another-big-airflow-rival-and-it-s-not-a-data-pipeline-story-7tredpl6i twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Prefect just bought Dagster, another big Airflow rival — and it’s not a data pipeline story | daily.dev og:description: Prefect has announced the acquisition of Dagster, uniting two of the biggest Apache Airflow rivals under one roof. The deal keeps Dagster's products, pricing,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/prefect-just-bought-dagster-another-big-airflow-rival-and-it-s-not-a-data-pipeline-story-7tredpl6i og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/7TrEdPl6I.png og:image:alt: Prefect just bought Dagster, another big Airflow rival — and it’s not a data pipeline story 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. # Prefect just bought Dagster, another big Airflow rival — and it’s not a data pipeline story **[The New Stack](https://daily.dev/sources/newstack)** · 4 min read · 2 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Prefect has announced the acquisition of Dagster, uniting two of the biggest Apache Airflow rivals under one roof. The deal keeps Dagster's products, pricing, and roadmaps intact, with 40 Dagster employees joining Prefect. Prefect CEO Jeremiah Lowin frames the move not as a data pipeline consolidation but as a strategic bet on AI agent infrastructure: Dagster handles goal-setting and outcome tracking, Prefect handles execution, and FastMCP (Prefect's MCP framework, later adopted as Anthropic's official Python SDK) governs what agents can access. Both companies had already been pivoting toward agentic workloads before the deal. Dagster founder Nick Schrock, who had stepped back to CTO in 2022, is departing the project entirely despite being listed as a strategic advisor in the official announcement. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Is Prefect acquiring Dagster, and what happens to Dagster's product after the deal? Prefect is acquiring Dagster, though the deal has not yet formally closed. Dagster and its managed cloud version, Dagster+, will keep their existing names, pricing, and product roadmaps. About 40 people from the Dagster team are moving over to Prefect as part of the acquisition. _daily.dev keeps orchestration engineers current on how Prefect and Dagster tooling evolves after mergers like this._ ### What role does FastMCP play in Prefect's strategy for AI agents? FastMCP is Prefect's tool for connecting AI agents to outside systems, letting developers build Model Context Protocol servers by writing plain Python functions instead of hand-coding the protocol. Prefect shipped FastMCP the same month Anthropic released MCP in late 2024, and Anthropic later adopted FastMCP as the official Python SDK for MCP. _Teams wiring agents to external tools track MCP framework choices like FastMCP on daily.dev._ ### Why did Dagster founder Nick Schrock leave after the Prefect acquisition? Nick Schrock, who founded Dagster and moved from CEO to CTO in 2022, announced on his own blog that he is moving on from the project and company entirely, despite the official acquisition announcement naming him alongside CEO Pete Hunt as a strategic advisor staying active in the open-source community. _daily.dev helps engineers follow founder departures and leadership shifts shaping tools they rely on._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@hardik15** · 0 upvotes > Data world is merging in the one to compete again the open-source. Kind of bad for paid users. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Apache Airflow Explained: A Beginner-Friendly Guide](https://daily.dev/posts/apache-airflow-explained-a-beginner-friendly-guide-mq0xti9p0) · DigitalOcean Community · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Managed Apache Airflow: Scaling Data & AI Workloads](https://daily.dev/posts/managed-apache-airflow-scaling-data-ai-workloads-1s4kat53h) · Google Cloud · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Creative Dagster Projects from the Community](https://daily.dev/posts/creative-dagster-projects-from-the-community-ibhvtpjdv) · Dagster Blog · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ex-DeepMind founders raise $20M for Airspeed's AI sales agents](https://daily.dev/posts/ex-deepmind-founders-raise-20m-for-airspeed-s-ai-sales-agents-3ld000ryi) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Snowflake Acquires TensorStax to Accelerate Agentic AI for Data Engineering](https://daily.dev/posts/snowflake-acquires-tensorstax-to-accelerate-agentic-ai-for-data-engineering-sxwcdvmij) · Snowflake · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#workflow-orchestration](https://daily.dev/tags/workflow-orchestration), [#dagster](https://daily.dev/tags/dagster) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/prefect-just-bought-dagster-another-big-airflow-rival-and-it-s-not-a-data-pipeline-story-7tredpl6i) ```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":"Prefect just bought Dagster, another big Airflow rival — and it’s not a data pipeline story","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/prefect-just-bought-dagster-another-big-airflow-rival-and-it-s-not-a-data-pipeline-story-7tredpl6i","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/prefect-just-bought-dagster-another-big-airflow-rival-and-it-s-not-a-data-pipeline-story-7tredpl6i"},"datePublished":"2026-07-13T22:11:59.721Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T07:25:47.279Z","description":"Prefect has announced the acquisition of Dagster, uniting two of the biggest Apache Airflow rivals under one roof. 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Kind of bad for paid users.","datePublished":"2026-07-14T10:47:09.348Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7TrEdPl6I#c-ndgd7O5Y8","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Hardik","url":"https://daily.dev/hardik15","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--O0TOmw4y--/f_auto/v1715772965/public/noProfile"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/prefect-just-bought-dagster-another-big-airflow-rival-and-it-s-not-a-data-pipeline-story-7tredpl6i#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Is Prefect acquiring Dagster, and what happens to Dagster's product after the deal?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Prefect is acquiring Dagster, though the deal has not yet formally closed. Dagster and its managed cloud version, Dagster+, will keep their existing names, pricing, and product roadmaps. About 40 people from the Dagster team are moving over to Prefect as part of the acquisition. daily.dev keeps orchestration engineers current on how Prefect and Dagster tooling evolves after mergers like this."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What role does FastMCP play in Prefect's strategy for AI agents?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"FastMCP is Prefect's tool for connecting AI agents to outside systems, letting developers build Model Context Protocol servers by writing plain Python functions instead of hand-coding the protocol. Prefect shipped FastMCP the same month Anthropic released MCP in late 2024, and Anthropic later adopted FastMCP as the official Python SDK for MCP. Teams wiring agents to external tools track MCP framework choices like FastMCP on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Dagster founder Nick Schrock leave after the Prefect acquisition?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Nick Schrock, who founded Dagster and moved from CEO to CTO in 2022, announced on his own blog that he is moving on from the project and company entirely, despite the official acquisition announcement naming him alongside CEO Pete Hunt as a strategic advisor staying active in the open-source community. daily.dev helps engineers follow founder departures and leadership shifts shaping tools they rely on."}}]} ```