ClickHouse triples annualized revenue to $250M, charting a path toward an IPO

Last fall, the startup hired Jimmy Sexton, who previously ran investor relations at Snowflake, one of ClickHouse’s main competitors, as chief financial officer. Bringing on a CFO is often viewed as a signal that a company is preparing for public markets.

The company has already acquired six startups, including Langfuse, which helps developers track and evaluate AI agent performance. Izrailevsky indicated that ClickHouse plans to remain acquisitive, looking to scoop up “relatively young, but showing very promising technology” startups, typically open source, that complement its core product suite.

The technology behind ClickHouse was originally developed inside Russian search giant Yandex 17 years ago, but spun out as an independent startup in 2021.

ClickHouse has over 4,000 customers, including Anthropic, Meta, Capital One, and Decagon.

The startup’s open source database is designed to process the massive datasets required by AI agents. ClickHouse generates revenue by selling managed cloud services. Izrailevsky claimed that this commercial offering ultimately costs clients less than self-managing the open source version. It “is something that’s a little counterintuitive, but it also has been a big tailwind for us,” he said.