PingCAP

PingCAP is the company behind TiDB, an open-source distributed SQL database that speaks the MySQL protocol, and TiDB Cloud, the managed service that runs it for customers. It says it started in 2015, when three infrastructure engineers who had worked at large internet companies set out to build a better way to manage, scale and maintain databases, and chose to do it as open source.

What it does

TiDB spreads data and queries across many machines so that a database can grow without being split by hand, while applications keep using familiar SQL. Its storage layer, TiKV, is a key-value store that PingCAP says is a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Customers can run TiDB themselves or use TiDB Cloud, where PingCAP operates the clusters and provides a console, a SQL editor and management APIs.

Who it serves

PingCAP sells to engineering teams that have outgrown a single MySQL server or a hand-sharded setup, and to companies that want one database for both transactions and analytics. It says thousands of companies have modernised their data stack with TiDB, and that hundreds of contributors around the world work on the open-source project.

Recent news

In October 2026 PingCAP disclosed that an attacker had used stolen service account credentials to reach its internal systems between 9 September and 7 October, copying customer records and source code. It told TiDB Cloud customers to replace their management API keys and rotate any secrets shared with support, and says it found no evidence that data in customers' databases was accessed.

Key facts

Headquarters: 440 N Wolfe Rd, Sunnyvale, California, United States Other offices: Singapore; Tokyo, Japan Founded: 2015, as stated by the company Products: TiDB, TiKV, TiDB Cloud Chief executive: Max Liu, co-founder