Overview of Postgres at PlanetScale (Interview)
In this episode, Sam Lambert, CEO of PlanetScale, gives a wide-ranging update on how the company has evolved since 2022: adding Postgres, launching a new sharded Postgres product called Neki, expanding its AI-era use cases, and leaning into safe database operations for both humans and agents. The conversation focuses on PlanetScale’s developer experience, its infrastructure philosophy, the role of AI in modern database workflows, and the tension around open source in a more cutthroat, competitive market.
What PlanetScale Is Building Now
- PlanetScale Postgres is now available as a low-cost entry point for teams that want a managed Postgres experience with PlanetScale’s safety and operational tooling.
- Neki is PlanetScale’s new sharded Postgres offering, built from years of Vitess and PlanetScale experience.
- PlanetScale continues to grow its Vitess/MySQL business while expanding into large-scale Postgres workloads.
- The company is seeing strong adoption from AI companies and other fast-moving engineering teams that need safe, scalable database infrastructure.
Key Technical Themes
AI Agents and Safe Database Changes
PlanetScale is positioning itself as a system that works not just for developers, but for agentic workflows too.
- Sam described a demo where Cursor agents optimized a database on PlanetScale.
- The flow involved:
- using MCP and PlanetScale “skills” to get targeted guidance,
- creating an isolated branch for safe experimentation,
- and then using a deploy request to push changes safely to production.
- PlanetScale blocks dangerous schema changes, such as dropping columns that were recently queried.
- If something still breaks, PlanetScale can roll back massive schema changes instantly, even for 500 TB tables, with no data loss.
Infrastructure Behind the Scenes
- PlanetScale collects and analyzes massive amounts of query telemetry.
- Sam emphasized that the company has built deep internal infrastructure to turn raw operational data into short, useful prompts and instructions for agents.
- The platform is designed to give agents the same safety and guidance humans already rely on.
“Metal” and the Hardware Story
- PlanetScale’s “Metal” offering does not mean the company owns its own racks or builds its own machines.
- Instead, it runs on the hyperscalers’ bare metal infrastructure and layers PlanetScale’s software on top.
- Their differentiation comes from:
- higher-level database tooling,
- strong operational safety,
- and better price/performance through engineering rather than owning hardware.
Business Strategy and Market Positioning
- PlanetScale is seeing major demand from:
- startups,
- AI companies,
- and large enterprises migrating off Amazon products.
- The company’s bring-your-own-cloud model lets customers run PlanetScale inside their own AWS or GCP accounts.
- This helps with:
- security,
- compliance,
- billing,
- and latency.
- Sam said this model can make PlanetScale price-competitive with AWS after cloud discounts are factored in.
Open Source, Competition, and the Neki Decision
The Open Source Debate
Sam was candid about being undecided on whether to open source Neki.
- He sees real risks in today’s open source environment:
- competitors claiming credit,
- aggressive forking,
- and large players, especially Amazon, using their leverage in ways he считает harmful.
- He contrasted the earlier, more idealistic era of open source with today’s more hostile, strategic landscape.
Why He’s Cautious
- PlanetScale’s engineering knowledge is a major advantage.
- Open sourcing Neki could help competitors without necessarily helping PlanetScale customers.
- Sam repeatedly stressed that he’s still thinking it through and may change his mind.
Culture, Public Voice, and Leadership
- Sam described himself as unusually open and willing to change his mind quickly.
- He’s comfortable speaking forcefully in public when he believes someone is misstating benchmarks or spreading false claims.
- He views public correction as part of the job, especially in a competitive and often misleading industry.
- Internally, PlanetScale shares a lot with employees, including finances and board materials, while still keeping roadmap details tightly controlled.
Notable Insights
- “We built this for the flakiest agents of all humans.”
Sam used this idea to explain PlanetScale’s safety-first design. - Day 1 vs. Day 1,000:
He argued that infrastructure problems are often invisible at the start, but become existential at scale. - Experience as a moat:
PlanetScale’s advantage comes from years of hard-won operational knowledge, not just code. - Open source is still valuable, but more fragile than before:
Sam expressed admiration for open source maintainers while worrying that the ecosystem has become more exploitative.
Final Takeaway
This conversation paints PlanetScale as a company that has evolved from a MySQL/Vitess powerhouse into a broader database platform for the AI era, with Postgres, sharding, and agent-safe workflows at the center. The core message is consistent throughout: database infrastructure must be safe, scalable, and operationally elegant enough for both humans and AI agents to use without fear.