From vision to $100M ARR: Aiven's journey built on open source, empowering developers, and shaping the future of data infrastructure.
Oskari Saarenmaa
|RSS FeedChief Executive Officer at Aiven
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Today is a special day at Aiven. We are incredibly proud and humbled to announce that we have officially surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
This is more than just a number on a dashboard. It’s a powerful milestone that reflects the trust of thousands of developers, the incredible innovation of our customers, and the relentless dedication of our global team—the Aiven crabs.
When we started this journey, it was with a simple but deeply held conviction: developers could build better and make a bigger impact if they just had easy access to the best data technology. We saw brilliant teams spending more time wrestling with infrastructure complexity than solving the real-world problems they were passionate about. We wanted to change that, and reaching this milestone shows that we did.
Our commitment has always been to open source and the developer community. We believe that true, sustainable innovation happens in the open. It’s not just about using open source software; it’s about being active citizens in its ecosystem. We contribute code, sponsor foundations, and build our platform in a way that amplifies the power of these incredible community-driven projects. By providing a managed platform for essential open source technologies, we empower teams to build better, faster, and more reliably, and we all grow together.
"Our product philosophy is simple: stay true to open source and focus relentlessly on the developer experience. We handle the operational burden so our customers can focus on innovation. This $100M milestone is a validation of that strategy. We're not just providing services; we're providing a platform that developers love to use, one that anticipates their needs and gets out of their way." Soumya Bijjal, SVP Product, Aiven
Our growth has been powered by helping customers adopt and scale four core technologies at the heart of modern data infrastructure:
We are constantly inspired by what our customers build on the Aiven platform. From global retail and e-commerce leaders streamlining their operations to innovative SaaS providers and travel platforms building resilient data foundations, their success is our success. Thank you for trusting us with your most critical applications. Your feedback, challenges, and ambitions push us to be better every single day.
“Choosing to work with Aiven was a good decision from both a technical and business perspective,” says Spenser. “We do not want to manage Kafka on a day-to-day basis, so we need a vendor to deal with that for us. We are very happy with the service from Aiven: they have created and manage a really cost effective and robust set-up for our business-critical data infrastructure.” Yotam Spenser, Head of Data Engineering, WalkMe
“We are thrilled to celebrate a significant milestone in our partnership with Aiven. This new momentum demonstrates our commitment to delivering open-source data-solutions offering the best performance/price ratio. This achievement comes at a crucial time when Europe needs to strengthen its strategic autonomy, and where players like OVHcloud and Aiven can work together to strengthen the sovereign cloud products offering.” Yaniv FDIDA, Chief Product & Technology Officer, OVHcloud
“Our commitment to Aiven is more than just a contractual agreement. It’s a partnership that’s built on trust. Aiven has had a transformative impact on our company and we’re excited to see the contribution our partnership will bring to La Redoute’s success in the next few years.” João Granja, CTO, La Redoute
"With a healthy infrastructure and stable pipeline, and the fully managed platform that Aiven provides ... it’s just working without surprises." Sachin Menon, VP of Data & Marketing, Priceline
“Aiven has been a valuable partner in managing our Kafka infrastructure. By offloading the operational complexities of Kafka to Aiven, we’ve reduced the time and resources spent on infrastructure maintenance and troubleshooting. This has not only led to noticeable cost savings, but has also allowed our engineering teams to focus on high impact security features that are core to Sophos’ mission. The reliability offered by Aiven have enabled our data pipeline operations while ensuring performance and compliance standards are met.” Rodrigo Araujo, Senior Software Development Manager, Sophos
This achievement was only possible because of the incredible team we have at Aiven. To our ‘crabs’ around the world, past and present: thank you. Your talent, passion, and commitment to our customers are the heart of this company. Our culture built on courage, openness, and ownership, has enabled us to attract the best talent.
"Building a globally distributed, high-performing team has been one of our core goals. The 'crab' culture is about ownership, collaboration, and a deep sense of shared purpose. It’s about being resilient and adaptable. This milestone is a reflection of that culture in action, proving that you can build a world-class company with a foundation of trust and empowerment." Kenneth Chen, COO, Aiven
We also owe a huge thank you to our partners, who help us bring the Aiven platform to more developers every day. From the major cloud providers to technology partners and system integrators, your collaboration is essential to our mission and to the success of our mutual customers.
"Our go-to-market strategy has always been centered on the success of our customers and partners. We believe in building a strong ecosystem where everyone benefits. This milestone is proof that a customer-centric, partner-friendly model built on the foundation of open source is the future." Conor Forde, SVP Go to Market, Aiven
And finally, a heartfelt thank you to my co-founders and investors. Your belief in our vision from the very beginning gave us the foundation and the freedom to build Aiven the right way—focused on long-term value for the open source community and our customers, not short-term gains. You saw the potential when Aiven was just an idea, and your support has been unwavering.
“It's incredible to see Aiven hit $100M ARR. When we first invested in 2021, we saw a team with a unique understanding of open source and a clear vision for the data cloud. They identified a genuine developer pain point and built an elegant, scalable solution with best-in-class execution. I believe that this milestone is just the beginning as Aiven is in an excellent position to become the category king for open source AI infrastructure.” Luca Eisenstecken, Partner, Atomico
As proud as we are of this moment, we are even more excited about the future. This milestone isn't a destination; it's a launchpad.
Beyond celebrating our own achievements, our growth empowers us to support the next generation of future-defining builders. We want to help early-stage startups accelerate their journey towards significant milestones, potentially even faster than we did. If you're an early-stage startup eager to build your data infrastructure on open source, you can apply to the Aiven Cluster Program. Through the program, you get access to up to $100,000 in Aiven credits and invaluable support from our expert team, helping you establish strong and scalable data infrastructure.
We are also doubling down on our investment in innovation. Our commitment is to build the most trusted and secure data cloud for developers. We have incredible things on the horizon, including our next-generation Diskless architecture for Apache Kafka. This is a fundamental reimagining of Kafka in the cloud. By delegating replication directly to object storage, we can slash the costs by eliminating costly cross-AZ network traffic and local disks. It means no more painful cluster rebalancing, no more hot partitions, and instant elasticity. It's Kafka, but rebuilt for the cloud era.
But our vision extends beyond a single feature. We are pushing the boundaries of what a managed data platform should look like in the age of AI, and we're doing it in the open, with the community. We will continue to expand our portfolio of open source services, deepen our integrations, and invest in AI-powered features to make our platform even smarter and easier to use.
Learn more about the future of streaming with Diskless:
The journey has been incredible, but the best is yet to come. To our customers, our partners, and the entire open source community, thank you for being a part of our story. We can’t wait to build the future with you.
Thank you,
Oskari
