Fivetran Acquires SQLMesh, consolidation continues, Matrices in Orchestra #100 w/e 05 Sep 2025
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last week we said:
Anthropic raised $13bn at 170bn valuation
These will be covered in depth in next weeks’ roundup.
But instead Fivetran acquired SQLMesh. And everyone else wrote about it. The summary is pretty classic
Those new to the data industry who don’t understand the interplay between open-source software and profit-making enterprises pretended to be upset (but let’s be real, noone really gets upset about this stuff)
“Industry veterans” told them not to be so stupid (which is rude, and hypocritical, because that trust is the key to their success in the first place. Oh how times change)
Reddit says SQLMesh will become more expensive
Jury’s out on what happens but worth noting Tyson, Toby etc. are adamant that it will remain fully OS and continue to become the standard for transformation and I am not inclined to disagree here
We’ve not had a chance to write this up yet, but even if we did it would be far less entertaining than our Databricks vs. Snowflake final chapter. Instead, we made some memes which you are free to enjoy at your leisure below (scroll down).
Orchestra Product Updates
Orchestra Matrices
Our biggest feature yet. Get in touch if you know what a matrix strategy is.
Azure Private Link
We’re excited to announce GA of azure private link in Orchestra. This means you can securely connect to on-premise machines via your Azure Cloud and securely connect to any resources deployed within your VNET such as Azure Databricks, a Private Snowflake Instance, Azure Data Factory via Private Endpoint or even just a plain old VM.
Improved Analytics
Easily identify
Long running jobs
Jobs most skipped (stuff that is therefore stale)
Failing Jobs
Motherduck integration
You can now connect to Motherduck directly and run dbt on duck db ran in Motherduck. This means Motherduck + Orchestra can be the backbone of your data stack just like warehouses like Snowflake and Databricks are today. Check-out the docs here.
Fivetran Tobiko mem dump
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YouTube and Podcast 🎥
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Special 💫
💫 Data Engineering Weekly #235 (link)
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