At FirstMark, we have spent over a decade tracking how data infrastructure evolves to power modern applications and use cases. We’ve seen the shift to cloud warehouses / lakehouses, the rise of the modern data stack for analytics / ML, and the explosion of vector databases with the agentic AI era.

Though through this all, a paradox has persisted. MySQL is, by many measures, the most popular open-source database in the world. It powers the core systems for F500s, the giants of the web and holds the data of millions of applications. Yet as AI reshapes what applications need from their infra layer, MySQL has remained surprisingly static.

While the PostgreSQL ecosystem has thrived on a culture of extensibility, allowing it to adapt rapidly to new workloads, MySQL developers have been forced to choose: A) stick with the reliability they love, or B) migrate to a new database just to get the features (like vector search) they need for AI.

We call this the “Innovation Gap,” and we believe it is about to close.

Today, we are thrilled to announce that FirstMark is leading the $25M Series A financing for VillageSQL, joined by our friends at GV, Spark Capital, and Homebrew, and bringing total financing for the Company to $35M.

Permission-less Innovation

VillageSQL goes beyond previous fork attempts to fundamentally re-architect how innovation happens in the MySQL ecosystem. The team has built a “tracking fork” that introduces a robust extension framework that enables developers, for the first time, to add custom data types, indexes, and AI-native functions. This shifts MySQL’s future away from a single vendor and gives power back to the builders.

AI is at its best when it has scalable access to existing business data and context. For enterprises with massive MySQL footprints, this means a path to modern agentic workloads without the risk and cost of a database migration. 

Betting on the Architects

We invest in people first. We’ve known Dominic Preuss and Steve Schirripa for many years, and see in them a rare combination of battle-tested engineering brilliance and moonshot vision. This shows in the foundations of VillageSQL, where the name represents a different kind of database company – a “village” where community contribution and innovation are brought roaring back to life.

The agentic AI era requires infrastructure that is as agile as the agents themselves. We are proud to back Dominic, Steve, and the VillageSQL team as they build a new path for MySQL.

The alpha is available today. We invite you to join the village.