In June 2025, Snowflake made a strategic acquisition of Crunchy Data, aiming to integrate Postgres, the leading open-source transactional database, into its offerings. The Crunchy Data team has dedicated years to enhancing Postgres for enterprise environments, significantly influencing how organizations deploy and manage this powerful database at scale. This article delves into Crunchy Data’s journey and the expertise that will inform the evolution of the Snowflake data platform.
Developer-friendly Postgres, ready for enterprise
The inception of Crunchy Data dates back to 2012, when founders Bob and Paul Laurence identified a rising need for open-source databases that met the stringent security requirements of large enterprises. They embarked on a mission to productionalize Postgres through a carefully curated, security-first distribution known as Crunchy Certified PostgreSQL. This distribution is designed with security at its core, optimized for performance, and enriched with advanced features through a suite of open-source extensions. During this period, the Crunchy team played a pivotal role in achieving Common Criteria certification for Postgres and authored the official Postgres STIG, a comprehensive security hardening guide.
In 2017, Crunchy Data introduced the groundbreaking Postgres Operator for Kubernetes. This operator automates provisioning, lifecycle management, and zero-downtime rolling updates, quickly becoming one of the most utilized Kubernetes operators for Postgres. As cloud computing and database-as-a-service models gained traction, Crunchy Data adapted by launching Crunchy Bridge in 2020, a fully managed cloud Postgres service. Crunchy Bridge is tailored for production readiness and enhances the developer experience by streamlining the deployment and management of Postgres databases. It automates critical tasks such as backups and high availability, enabling developers to concentrate on their applications rather than database administration. Additionally, it incorporates robust security features, including encryption at rest and in transit, isolated networks, VPC peering, and Private Link.
Since the launch of Crunchy Bridge, Crunchy Data has continued to invest in Postgres and the broader community.
Contributions to the Postgres ecosystem
The Crunchy Data team has significantly influenced the Postgres ecosystem through various contributions. Regular Postgres committer Tom Lane joined Crunchy Data in 2015, with other team members also enhancing Postgres functionality. Notable contributions include the psql watch command by Will Leinweber, timing from Greg Sabino Mullane, and conninfo by David Christensen.
Beyond core Postgres, the Crunchy team has made substantial contributions to the Postgres extension ecosystem. Paul Ramsey chairs the PostGIS Project Steering Committee, advancing Postgres’ geospatial capabilities, while Keith Fiske’s work on pg_partman has become integral to automating table partitioning strategies. Marco Slot and Önder Kalaci have been instrumental in projects like pg_cron and Citus, which introduced sharding capabilities to Postgres. Craig Kerstiens, former Chief Product Officer at Crunchy, was pivotal in developing one of the first managed Postgres services (Heroku Postgres) and is currently spearheading the engineering efforts behind Snowflake Postgres.
Moreover, the Crunchy team actively supports the Postgres community through organizational leadership. Elizabeth Garrett Christensen is a board member of the United States PostgreSQL Association, while Karen Jex serves on the board of PostgreSQL Europe. Their commitment to enhancing database security, functionality, and developer-friendliness is evident, and now they are channeling that expertise into Snowflake Postgres.
A data platform for every workload
Snowflake Postgres represents a harmonious fusion of two visionary approaches to data management. While Snowflake has transformed data analytics with its cloud-native data warehouse, Crunchy Data has spent over a decade refining open-source enterprise Postgres. Together, they are constructing a unified data layer that seamlessly integrates transactional and analytical workloads, eliminating the complexities associated with fragmented systems. Organizations will be empowered to run mission-critical applications at any scale on Postgres while simultaneously leveraging that data for analytics, machine learning, and AI—all within the secure and governed environment of Snowflake.
For those eager to explore Snowflake Postgres, further details can be found in the acquisition announcement. Additionally, registration is open for the virtual BUILD 2025 conference taking place in November.
