🌊 Stream Smarter. Switch to Ursa. #ApacheKafka #ApachePulsar #Ursa #DataStreaming @streamnativeio

Last week Snowflake launched Datastream — Kafka-compatible streaming built directly into the platform. To me that's a strong signal: the industry now agrees streaming and the lakehouse belong together, especially for AI agents that need to act on fresh data. That convergence is exactly the shift we've been building toward. We call it - #Lakestream. AI agents can't act on yesterday's data. They need the latest events — seconds old — sitting next to the full history that gives them meaning, governed enough to trust. That's real-time context, and it's what the classic two-system setup — streaming on one side, the lakehouse on the other, pipelines in between — was never designed to deliver. A Lakestream unifies the two, end to end on open standards. You produce and consume the live stream through the Kafka API, and you query that same data as an open Apache Iceberg table from any engine. One stream, written once — a low-latency event stream and an open table at the same time. The log that backs the stream is the table, one copy serving the present and the past at once. The lakehouse merged the lake and the warehouse. The #Lakestream does it one step earlier in the data's life: it merges the stream and the lakehouse — and keeps both sides open. We wrote up the full thesis 👇 streamnative.io/blog/what-is…

🚀 The Native Apache Kafka Service powered by Ursa is now in Limited Public Preview. Apache Kafka 4.2 on Ursa. Every topic is a lakehouse table. Up to 95% lower TCO. 🌟 $1,000 credits with code UFK1000 (Apr 7–14). 👉 Sign up: hubs.ly/Q049R9Kr0 📖 Read the announcement: hubs.ly/Q049Rbkt0 #ApacheKafka #Lakestream #Lakehouse #Iceberg #RealTimeAnalytics

👉 StreamNative is introducing a Kafka fork too! One which adds an additional storage engine to Kafka (their proprietary Ursa engine). This Kafka fork will feature Diskless Topics that store the data directly to S3 in an open-table format. Zero copy, kind of similar to Aiven's Iceberg Topics, but for Diskless. Most importantly, they said they'll open source it! ⭐️ Some really good writing in there re: the power of the Kafka protocol. They also call it the TCP/IP of streaming (I expect a hat tip to Justin Manchester here just a few days after our podcast haha). I'll record a more in-depth video on this announcement. Despite being bearish on the Kafka industry in terms of economic value, I'm starting to think we will see MORE acceleration in terms of things shipped in the space. With coding harnesses like Claude Code massively boosting dev productivity, I expect that the bottleneck will become organizational structure. The fastest-moving startup wins the feature war, essentially. Just yesterday we had RedPanda ship their R1 engine also with adaptable topics (fast & expensive, slow & cheap, etc.). 💡 With this StreamNative UFK (Ursa for Kafka) announcement, we have three Kafka engines that support flexible topics - Aiven Inkless, RedPanda R1, StreamNative UFK. Just a few months ago Aiven was the star child with the only such flexible engine. Competitors are catching up. 🔥

It's April 1st and I have an announcement: @streamnativeio is a @apachekafka company now. Yes, the Pulsar people. We took Apache Kafka 4.2 and gave it a lakehouse foundation. Topics = Iceberg tables. 10x cheaper. Zero code changes. streamnative.io/blog/we-are-…

Just listened to Jay’s keynote at Current Summit London. Unified batch and streaming? That’s old news. Snapshot queries? That’s just querying Iceberg tables… come on. You can already do that with #Ursa by querying Ursa topics’ lakehouse tables using #Flink, #Spark, or any engine you like—no need to wait for Confluent’s snapshot query to GA. Want to see it in action? Stop by the StreamNative booth. We’ll show you how Ursa open source Flink gives you fast, flexible snapshot queries—today. #Current25

I just kicked off a new blog series on AI agents! First post tackles a pain point: chatbots powered by stale data and sit in silos. 🤖➡️🌊 How do we feed them real‑time streams and get them talking at scale? Check it out & tell me what you think 👉 streamnative.io/blog/ai-agen…

Very excited to announce that @streamnativeio now integrates with @databricks Unity Catalog—the first & only data streaming engine to natively support it! Seamlessly ingest streaming data into Delta Lake & Iceberg for real-time analytics with unified governance by Unity Catalog. streamnative.io/blog/seamles… #DataStreaming #UnityCatalog #Lakehouse #AI #RealTimeAnalytics #ApacheKafka #DeltaLake #ApacheIceberg

StreamNative's Ursa Engine now integrates with @databricks Unity Catalog, bringing real-time streaming to the Lakehouse! ✅ Stream to Iceberg & Delta Lake ✅ Better data governance & AI workflows ✅ Faster, cost-effective real-time analytics hubs.ly/Q0351NYT0 #RealTimeData #Databricks #Lakehouse #AI #Streaming

🚀 Excited to announce our Technology Select Tier partnership with @SnowflakeDB Together, we’re simplifying real-time analytics & AI: ✔️ Faster performance ✔️ Lower cloud costs ✔️ Scalable, streamlined architectures Learn more: hubs.ly/Q02_rXR60 #DataStreaming #AI #Snowflake

While #BYOC has become increasingly popular, we've seen debates about which approach to BYOC is best. In our view, whether it's BYOC, Dedicated/Serverless, or self-managed, what organizations need is a Portable Data Plane. Checkout our blog post: streamnative.io/blog/byoc2-p…

While "Shift-Left" is a hot topic in data strategies today, particularly for advancing real-time data streaming architectures, it's important to look at it within a broader context. We believe in a more holistic approach. In today’s data-driven world, Shift-Left alone isn’t enough. For a truly comprehensive strategy, you need to balance Shift-Left with other architectures like Lakehouses. Data streaming is critical for real-time generative AI, but the real foundation for these applications lies in the combination of data streaming and lakehouses. This synergy is what we call the Streaming-Augmented Lakehouse (SAL)—akin to how Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances large language models (LLMs). Just as RAG augments AI, SAL enhances lakehouses with real-time streaming capabilities, creating a dynamic data ecosystem for real-time AI. But let’s be clear: SAL is not just another Lambda Architecture. The essence of SAL is in its headless, multi-modality data storage that allows you to store one copy of data and present it as a stream or table depending on your use case. It moves ingestion and computation left, achieving low latency while ensuring data quality and governance. With SAL, businesses get the flexibility of multiple modalities (stream or table), protocols (Kafka or Pulsar), and semantics (competing queues vs. sequential streams) to meet diverse business needs. In the AI age, the future of data strategy demands more. Businesses need a new data foundation that combines the real-time power of streaming with lakehouses. SAL is that foundation. It enables real-time data to continuously fuel AI systems while also managing the vast historical datasets required for training and improving models. By adopting SAL, enterprises can bring real-time insights directly into their lakehouse architectures—acting on data as it arrives while maintaining governance, scalability, and deep analytics. We believe SAL is the key to unlocking the full potential of real-time Gen AI. Curious to learn more? Check out our latest blog post! 👉 streamnative.io/blog/introdu… And if you’re passionate about the latest trends in data streaming and AI, join us at the Data Streaming Summit on October 28-29 at the Grand Hyatt SFO. DM me if you’d like discounted tickets! eventbrite.com/e/data-stream… #ApacheKafka #ApachePulsar #Lakehouses #ShiftLeft #StreamingAugmentedLakehouse #GenAI

6 years ago, I never imagined #ApachePulsar would grow into what it is today. From an idea to solve real-time data challenges to a thriving community project @apache_pulsar it’s been an incredible journey. 🙌 Grateful for everyone who's been a part of this! 🚀 👉 streamnative.io/blog/celebra…

Sad to hear that Upstash shut down its serverless Kafka service. If you're looking for an alternative, check out Serverless Kafka on @streamnativeio Cloud! Start with $200 in free credits—no credit card needed. Need more? DM me! Learn more: streamnative.io/blog/introdu…