Firebolt

Firebolt develops an analytical database aimed at engineering teams building data-intensive and real-time analytics products. The engine uses a PostgreSQL SQL dialect and is distributed as a single binary that runs on a laptop with SQLite for metadata, or as a cluster of up to 256 nodes using Postgres for metadata, with object storage as the underlying substrate. It handles data volumes from gigabytes to petabytes, supports both real-time and batch analytics, and offers ACID transactions with snapshot isolation. Storage uses a custom format for real-time workloads and Parquet plus Apache Iceberg for batch; connectivity is available via ADBC, a JSON REST interface and the Postgres wire protocol.

An open-source version of the engine was in preview at the time of the sources, with general availability announced as forthcoming, alongside a previously released self-hosted edition called Firebolt Core. Deployment options include a raw binary, Docker, Helm charts and a Kubernetes operator, on x86 or ARM, on bare metal, VMs, any cloud or on-premises data centers. Cloud support is generally available on AWS and GCP, with Azure in preview. Recent engine releases have added Iceberg catalog attachment, a native JSON type with user-defined schemas and Iceberg schema evolution, HNSW vector search indexes over float arrays, cross-database joins, and Tableau Cloud connectivity.

Earlier company materials described the product as a cloud data warehouse delivering sub-second analytic experiences at scale for engineering teams, allowing analysis of larger data volumes than previously possible.

Founding story

Firebolt was founded by Eldad Farkash and Saar Bitner, who previously worked together at business intelligence company Sisense, of which Farkash was a co-founder. Farkash served as CEO and Bitner as COO at founding. The company emerged from stealth in early 2021.

Business model

Open core: the engine is open source and can be self-hosted without limits on the user's own hardware, while Firebolt monetizes a managed cloud service and a bring-your-own-cloud option with support, audit logs and metrics.

Consumption-based pricing for the managed service: compute is billed per second by engine size (from $1.84/hour for a single-node, 8-vCPU S engine to $58.88/hour for a four-node, 256-vCPU 4XL engine in US East), with object storage passed through at $0.0264 per GB per month. New users receive $200 in free credits.

Traction

By January 2022 the company reported strong adoption among fast-growing technology companies after roughly a year of operation, with the team nearly doubling in six months to 200 people across 25 countries. The managed service holds SOC 2, ISO 27018, ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance and operates in six cloud regions.

Latest developments

The open-source version of Firebolt is in preview with a general availability countdown running on the company site. Recent releases added Iceberg catalog attachment via CREATE ICEBERG DATABASE (4.32), a native JSON data type, user-defined schemas, Iceberg schema evolution and HNSW vector indexes (4.31), vector search indexes for low-latency similarity search (4.30), cross-database joins and queries (4.29), and Tableau Cloud connectivity plus role-based transfer of object ownership (4.28). Azure support is in preview alongside generally available AWS and GCP.