MariaDB’s Bad Week: Layoffs and an End to Azure Support
An SEC filing on October 12, 2023 revealed MariaDB will undergo a restructuring plan "to better align its workforce with the needs of its business and to reduce the Company’s operating costs." As part of that plan, MariaDB will lay off 84 people, or approximately 28% of the company's workforce, according to the filing. Of those, the filing noted that "an estimated 13 employees are expected to be provided transition packages that will provide for continued services through various dates of the Company’s fiscal year 2024."
The company expects the plan will result in "restructuring charges consisting of approximately $3.1 million in employee severance and notice period payments, benefits, and related costs and $0.1 million in non-cash stock-based compensation expense related to vesting of share-based awards, and cash expenditures of approximately $0.8 million to satisfy amounts owed due to earned vacation time," according to the filing.
Update
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MariaDB ditches products and staff in restructure, bags $26.5M loan to cushion fall
MariaDB is ditching strategic products and cutting 28 percent of the workforce as it struggles to overcome the financial challenges its faced since floating on the stock market. The company also announced access to a new $26.5 million loan facility.
Late coverage:
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MariaDB’s Financial Worries Go From Bad to Worse - FOSS Force
Lately MariaDB’s board has been in the process of doing something that looks a lot like chopping off its limbs to keep enough blood in its torso to keep itself alive.
If you don’t know MariaDB, it’s a database-as-a-service company that was started in part by Michael “Monty” Widenius, who also created MySQL in the 1990s, which he sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008. When Oracle purchased Sun and MySQL ended up being owned by Big Red, Widenius almost immediately forked MySQL and named the fork after his younger daughter, Maria.
For most of this year, things have not been looking good for the company which went public last December, and lately things appear to have taken a turn for the worse.
During the last week or so, the company started the process of laying off 84 people, or 28% of its workforce, as well as shutting down two of its popular products, SkySQL, which it launched in 2020 and Xpand, a distributed backend to SkySQL that was released in 2021 that was expanded in May to include a PostgreSQL compatible front end.
Borisov:
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MariaDB Corporation Is Going Through Tough Days, Here’s Why
MariaDB Corporation makes major changes, cutting 28% of its workforce and ending SkySQL & Xpand development to curb operating expenses.