Ayasdi Founders Gurjeet Singh Gunnar Carlsson Harlan Sexton

Apple Inc. has acquired NoSQL database startup FoundationDB Inc. for an unknown sum.

According to reports, the acquisition was due to FoundationDB’s attractiveness in the speed at which it handled Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable (ACID) compliant transactions coupled with strong scalability.

Founded in 2009, the company has as it mission to provide data storage technology “that frees engineers and companies to focus on problems other than building their data stack.” FoundationDB claims that it is creating a new generation of database technology that combines the advantages of modern NoSQL databases with the power and reliability of ACID transactions.

General availability of FoundationDB’s ACID compliant, NoSQL database was announced in August 2013, with the company then pitching its Key-Value Store product to companies operating in the Internet of things space in December last year.

As SiliconANGLE’s Maira Deutscher wrote in January:

FoundationDB has spent the last six years trying to address the trade-off between availability and consistency that has plagued the database world for decades. The problem, as articulated in Eric Brewer’s CAP theorem, lies in the fact that a system must make certain sacrifices to preserve functionality when scaling across multiple machines.

Apple sort of confirmed the acquisition, telling The Wall Street Journal that “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

A statement on the FoundationDB forum would seemingly further confirm that the acquisition has taken place:

Thank you for your support of FoundationDB over the last five years. We’re grateful to have shared our vision of building the best database software and we strongly value your participation in this community. We have made the decision to evolve our company mission and, as of today, we will no longer offer downloads.

The acquisition is said to be of assistance to Apple services including iMessage, and iAd, the latter being Apple’s mobile advertising platform.

Based in Vienna, VA, FoundationDB had raised $22.7 million over two rounds prior to acquisition. Investors included Sutter Hill Ventures, SV Angel and one other firm.