MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License.

On 16 January 2008, MySQL AB announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for approximately $1 billion.

[10][11] MariaDB's API and protocol are compatible with those used by MySQL, plus some features to support native non-blocking operations and progress reporting.

[52] However, for recent MySQL features, MariaDB either has no equivalent yet (like geographic function) or deliberately chose not to be 100% compatible (like GTID, JSON).

In January 2025, listed sponsors were Amazon, Acronis, Alibaba Cloud, Constructor, Intel, MariaDB Corporation AB, ServiceNow, WebPros, DBS.

[9][80][81] In December 2012 Michael Widenius, David Axmark, and Allan Larsson announced the formation of a foundation that would oversee the development of MariaDB.

The Board appointed the Eclipse Foundation's Executive Director Mike Milinkovich as an advisor to lead the transition.

To build a global business, MariaDB Corporation AB was founded in 2010 by Patrik Backman, Ralf Wahlsten, Kaj Arnö, Max Mether, Ulf Sandberg, Mick Carney and Michael "Monty" Widenius.

Subsequently, the name was changed on 1 October 2014 to reflect the company's role as the main driving force behind the development of MariaDB Server and the largest support-provider for it.

[98][99][100] MariaDB Corporation AB announced in February 2022 its intention to become a publicly listed company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

[117] Starting October 2023, as part of the company's restructuring plan, MariaDB no longer offers SkySQL as a product.

[citation needed] It is undergoing a D-series round in 2022 aiming at an additional $104M in combination with its intention to become a listed company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Some of the initial A-series investors in MariaDB Corporation AB were e.g. OpenOcean and Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd).