Just did a funding round. In a sign of the times clickhouse used to be an interesting DB product, but is now a "database software that companies can use as they develop AI agents "

<i>Database technology startup ClickHouse Inc. has raised $400 million in a new funding round that values the company at $15 billion — more than double its valuation less than a year ago. </i>

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-16/clickhous...

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embedding-shape 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Investors are finicky creatures, if you've been relying on VC-funding since before, it's hard to stop until you are really successful, and if everyone starts to only look at shiny AI stuff and you still need investors, you end up with not much choice.

I wish there was less of it, we'd have better software then, but :/

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esafak 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Would we? You can look at places with less funding and see how many software companies get off the ground.

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embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You can look at places with less funding

Yeah, like FOSS which is drastically underfunded since birth, yet continues to put out software that the entire world ends up relying on, instead of relying on whatever VC-pumped companies are putting out.

I'm not talking "better software" as in "made a lot of money", I meant "better" as in "had a better impact on the world".

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esafak 3 hours ago | parent [-]

FOSS software is written by people working at companies that likely owe their existence to VC.

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weiliddat 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That sounds like more sign of recent times.

FOSS software that many rely on that has been around for a while were non-VC: VCS, Linux / GNU / BSD, web browsers, various programming languages, various databases...

	▲	rhplus 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, those projects were un(der)funded in the 80s and 90s but the reason we talk about them today is because of the huge amount of investment - both direct and in kind - that VC backed companies have managed to give to many of them. I think it’s easy to forget how long ago it was when FOSS truly was the outsider and wouldn’t be touched by most companies. Mozilla/Firefox started in 1998 and then started taking ad revenue from Google in 2005, which pays for a large chunk of its development. It’s been part of the Silicon Valley money machine for 20 years, most of its existence.

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hrimfaxi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What gave you that idea?

	▲	esafak 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Because Silicon Valley, which contributes the majority of the code, is venture backed. For example, 84% of the Linux kernel's development is corporate: https://commandlinux.com/statistics/linux-foundation-growth-... I don't know why people are so upset here.

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CodingJeebus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I sometimes wonder if the VC ecosystem creates its own confirmation bias by making it easy to see and aggregate companies it incubates. Whenever I look for jobs, I'm always surprised to find companies that have taken no VC funding and don't try particularly hard to market to the industry as a whole, preferring instead to stay relatively under the radar.

They tend to have more grounded financials (read: paths to profitability) and while the pay packages aren't quite aligned with the top end of the market, they also tend to manage headcount more responsibly than FAANG. I work with a fairly niche stack and I'm constantly finding new companies that I've never heard of and don't raise VC rounds.

Long way of saying that just because they're not easy to find doesn't mean they don't exist.

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steveBK123 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it’s hard to make money as a pure play DB vendor and has been for a decade or two. So they all inevitably pivot into some service specific to whatever the hot use case of the moment is… Cybersecurity. Observability. Crypto. AI.