Scaling DuckDB in the cloud with MotherDuck CEO Jordan Tigani

In this episode of Database School, Aaron Francis sits down with Jordan Tigani, co-founder and CEO of MotherDuck, to break down what DuckDB is, how MotherDuck hosts it in the cloud, and why analytics workloads are shifting toward embedded databases. They dig into Duck Lake, pricing models, scaling strategies, and what it really takes to build a modern cloud data warehouse.

Follow Jordan:
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/jrdntgn
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani
MotherDuck: https://motherduck.com

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Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
Database School: https://databaseschool.com
Database School YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UCT3XN4RtcFhmrWl8tf_o49g (Subscribe today)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:44 - What DuckDB is and why embedded analytics matter
04:03 - How MotherDuck hosts DuckDB in the cloud
05:18 - Is MotherDuck like the “Turso for DuckDB”?
07:38 - Isolated analytics per user and scaling to zero
08:51 - The academic origins of DuckDB
10:00 - From SingleStore to founding MotherDuck
12:28 - Getting fired… and funded 12 days later
16:39 - Jordan’s background: Kernel dev, BigQuery, and Product
18:36 - Partnering with DuckDB Labs and avoiding a fork
20:52 - Why MotherDuck targets startups and the long tail
24:22 - Pricing lessons: why $25 was too cheap
28:11 - Ducklings, instance sizing, and compute scaling
34:16 - How MotherDuck separates compute and storage
37:09 - Inside the AWS architecture and differential storage
43:12 - Hybrid execution: joining local and cloud data
45:14 - Analytics vs warehouses vs operational databases
47:41 - Data lakes, Iceberg, and what Duck Lake actually is
53:22 - When Duck Lake makes more sense than DuckDB alone
56:09 - Who switches to MotherDuck and why
58:02 - PG DuckDB and offloading analytics from Postgres
1:00:49 - Who should use MotherDuck and why
1:03:39 - Hiring plans and where to follow Jordan
1:05:01 - Wrap-up