Couchbase, Inc. is an American public software company that provides a unified, AI-ready developer data platform for mission-critical applications across cloud, on-premises, mobile and edge environments. The firm develops and supports Couchbase Server, Couchbase Capella (its fully-managed database-as-a-service), and Couchbase Mobile & Edge, including Couchbase Lite an embedded database for offline-first apps.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, it has additional offices in Austin, Bengaluru, Tel Aviv, Singapore, and London.[citation needed] On September 24, 2025, the company was acquired by Haveli Investments, in a deal valued at approximately $1.5 billion.[1]
History
NorthScale was founded in 2009, and in March 2010 announced $5 million in funding from Accel Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.[2] Original officers listed were James Phillips, Steve Yen and Dustin Sallings, who were involved in the development of memcached.[3] In May 2010, a $10 million investment led by the Mayfield Fund was announced for NorthScale, and Bob Wiederhold replaced Phillips as chief executive.[4] Some time later in 2010, NorthScale was renamed Membase, Incorporated.[5]
CouchOne Inc. was also founded in 2009 as Relaxed, in Berkeley, California.[6] It developed and provided commercial support for the Apache CouchDB open source project, a document database. Initial funding was $2 million, including investor Redpoint Ventures.[7] Couchbase, Inc. was created through the merger of Membase and CouchOne in February 2011. The merged company aimed to build an easily scalable, high-performance document-oriented database system, marketed with the term NoSQL.[8]
In August 2011, a $14 million funding was led by Ignition Partners.[9][10] In October 2011, DoCoMo Capital announced an investment of $1 million was part of that round.[11] In August, 2013, another round of $25 million was led by Adams Street Partners.[12] A round of $60 million in June, 2014, included new investor WestSummit.[13] A round of $30 million in March, 2016, was reported as giving a reduced valuation to the company.[14] Peter Finter became chief marketing officer in September 2016.[15] Matt Cain replaced Bob Wiederhold as CEO in April 2017. [16]
The company raised funding from Accel Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, Redpoint Ventures, Ignition Partners, and others.[17] Couchbase completed its initial public offering on July 21, 2021, and is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol BASE.[18]
Recognition include the 2012 Infoworld Bossie award,[19] Dataweek 2012 award,[20] Always-On Global award,[21] VentureWire's 50 FASTTech companies[22] GigaOM's Structure 50 list[23] and the Gartner cool vendor award.[24]
M&A Activity
On June 20 2025, Couchbase announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Haveli Investments (led by ex-Vista Equity Partners president Brian Sheth) for $1.5 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Couchbase shareholders will receive $24.50 per share in cash—representing a 29% premium to the closing price immediately prior and a 67% premium to the March 27 2025 price. The merger agreement includes a “go-shop” period expiring June 23, 2025, during which Couchbase may solicit superior proposals. Closing is expected in H2 2025, subject to customary regulatory and shareholder approvals.[25][26]
Couchbase key milestones
2010
June 2010 – Membase project begins. NoSQL’s rise and the Membase launch notes the project was open-sourced in mid-2010 by memcached leaders with Zynga and NHN (now Naver). [27]WIRED
2011
Feb 2011 – CouchOne and Membase merge to form Couchbase, Inc.[28][29]TechCrunch, eWEEK
2012
Jan 2012 – Couchbase Server 1.8 GA. Rebranded Membase line.[30] Scribd
Dec 2012 – Couchbase Server 2.0 GA with JSON document store, distributed indexing/query, incremental MapReduce, and XDCR.[31][32] InfoQ, The Register, Database Trends and Applications
2014
May 2014 – Couchbase Mobile 1.0. Couchbase’s mobile stack for iOS/Android with local data store and sync gateway.[33] InformationWeek
Oct 2014 – ForestDB engine announced (B+-trees). Couchbase replaces its storage engine with ForestDB for performance/transactions.[34] InfoQ
2015
Oct 2015 – Couchbase Server 4.0 introduces multi-dimensional scaling, geospatial indexes and new query language N1QL (SQL++). SQL-like query leap.[35] InfoWorld
Dec 2015 – Couchbase Mobile 1.1. 1.1 drop (Lite & Sync Gateway enhancements).[36] Dzone
2016
Feb 2016 – Couchbase Mobile 1.2 (enterprise-grade upgrades incl. ForestDB in Lite).[37] TDWI
Nov 2016 – Server 4.6 Developer Preview with FTS improvements, XDCR with globally ordered conflict resolution, and real-time connectors for Spark 2.0 and Kafka.[38][39] InfoQ, ADTmag
2017
Oct 2017 – Server 5.0 GA (Full-Text Search service broad availability; ephemeral buckets).[40] Altoros
Oct 2018 – Couchbase Server 6.0 GA; Analytics Service for JSON (SQL++/no-ETL) and the Kubernetes Autonomous Operator introduced around this period.[42] VentureBeat, 1PR Newswire
Mar 2024 – Server 7.6 GA adds Vector Search & SQL++ enhancements. Vector search across Server/Capella.[53] Blocks and Files
Aug 2024 – Couchbase Lite 3.2 & Sync Gateway 3.3 (LTS) with vector search integration. Mobile/edge vector search availability.[54] Blocks and Files
Dec 2, 2024 – Capella AI Services: independent coverage details Model Service (LLM hosting), Vectorization, Unstructured Data Service, AI Agent Catalog, and AI Functions for SQL++.[55][56] SiliconANGLE, TechTarget, CRN
2025
Jan & May 2025 – 7.6.x maintenance (7.6.5/7.6.6). Community version trackers reflect current 7.6.x release.[43] VentureBeat
Feb 24–25, 2025 – NVIDIA NIM integration.[57][58]TechTarget, Channel Insider
Mar 4, 2025 – Couchbase Edge Server 1.0 GA (lightweight, offline-first, ~1 GB RAM target).[59][60][61] The New Stackedgeir.com, DEVOPSdigest, Database Trends and Applications
July 2025 – Capella listed in the new AWS Marketplace “AI Agents & Tools” category. See AWS Marketplace listing and third-party trade coverage of the new category and Capella’s availability.[62][63] Amazon Web Services, Inc.Channel Insider, DEVOPSdigest
Community
Couchbase maintains official discussion forums and a Discord server for developers; the “couchbase” tag on Stack Overflow has over 4,000 questions (as of August 2025). Its open-source ecosystem is active on GitHub, including the Couchbase Labs organization with about 890 public repositories (as of August 2025). The independent DB-Engines ranking placed Couchbase 40th among database management systems in August 2025.[64][65][66][67]
↑ "Wilson Sonsini Advises Couchbase on $1.5 Billion Acquisition by Haveli Investments". Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Professional Corporation Home Page - Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Shanghai, Hong Kong, Brussels - Wilson Sonsini Advises Couchbase on $1.5 Billion Acquisition by Haveli Investments. Retrieved 2025-08-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
