MongoDB, Inc.
Company History
MongoDB History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2007 in New York, New York
When was MongoDB founded?
MongoDB was founded in 2007 in New York, New York by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin Ryan, making it 19 years old.
- Founded
- 2007
- Founding place
- New York, New York
- Founders
- Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin Ryan
- Headquarters today
- New York, New York, United States
- Milestones documented
- 12 (2007–2026)
- Current CEO
- Chirantan "CJ" Desai
- Acquisitions
- 4
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2007 | The 10gen Launch |
| 2009 | MongoDB Released as Open Source |
| 2013 | Renamed MongoDB Inc. |
| 2014 | The WiredTiger Acquisition |
| 2016 | The Atlas Debut |
| 2017 | Nasdaq IPO |
| 2018 | The License Change |
| 2018 | Acquired mLab |
| 2019 | Acquired Realm |
| 2025 | Acquired Voyage AI |
| 2025 | CJ Desai Named CEO |
| 2026 | 30% Quarterly Growth |
- Where was MongoDB founded?
- MongoDB was founded in New York, New York in 2007.
- Who founded MongoDB?
- MongoDB was founded by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin Ryan.
- When did MongoDB start?
- MongoDB was founded in 2007.
- How old is MongoDB?
- MongoDB is 19 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan, DoubleClick's co-founder/CTO and former CEO, and Eliot Horowitz, who had worked with Merriman at ShopWiki, founded 10gen in 2007 to build a cloud application platform. The database they built for that platform proved more useful than the platform itself, so 10gen open-sourced MongoDB in 2009 and renamed itself MongoDB, Inc. in 2013.
Founders
Dwight Merriman
Dwight Merriman co-founded 10gen (now MongoDB) in 2007 after scaling problems with relational databases at DoubleClick shaped his view of how application data should be stored. He served as MongoDB's early CEO and later chairman, and also co-founded Business Insider and Gilt Groupe with Kevin Ryan. Dwight Merriman was born in 1968 in New York City. Education: Miami University. Merriman was born on August 5, 1968. He co-founded DoubleClick with Kevin O'Connor and was its chief technology officer for 10 years. He was previously chairman of MongoDB and sits on its board.
Eliot Horowitz
Eliot Horowitz co-founded MongoDB (originally 10gen) in 2007. Frustrated by the severe limitations of traditional relational databases (like MySQL) when attempting to build highly scalable web applications, he helped architect a completely new 'document-based' database model. He served as Chief Technology Officer for over a decade, building MongoDB into the absolute default database for modern cloud applications. Eliot Horowitz was born in 1981. Education: Brown University. Horowitz was chief technology officer of MongoDB. He later founded the robotics software company Viam, where he is chief executive.
Kevin Ryan
Kevin Ryan co-founded 10gen in 2007 alongside Merriman and Horowitz, contributing business leadership and early company-building experience. He has co-founded several other New York companies, including Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, and Zola. Education: Yale University; INSEAD; Trumbull College. Kevin P. Ryan was an executive at DoubleClick from 1996 to 2005. He co-founded the venture firm AlleyCorp in 2008, through which he also started Gilt Groupe and Business Insider. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
The 10gen Launch
The founders launch 10gen, pioneering the flexible document database architecture.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMongoDB Released as Open Source
10gen released MongoDB as open-source software in 2009.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe WiredTiger Acquisition
Facing data integrity criticism, MongoDB acquires WiredTiger, rewriting its core engine.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe Atlas Debut
To monetize its user base, MongoDB launches Atlas, securing cloud revenue.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe License Change
Fighting aggressive cloud leaders, MongoDB executes the controversial SSPL license shift, protecting its IP.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAcquired mLab
MongoDB acquired mLab for $68 million. Acquired mLab, a managed MongoDB hosting provider, for $68 million to accelerate Atlas adoption.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAcquired Realm
MongoDB acquired Realm for $39 million. Acquired the Realm mobile database for $39 million to add on-device data and sync capabilities.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAcquired Voyage AI
MongoDB acquired Voyage AI, a developer of embedding and reranking models, to improve retrieval accuracy for AI applications on Atlas.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgCJ Desai Named CEO
CJ Desai, previously president of product and engineering at Cloudflare, succeeded Dev Ittycheria as president and CEO in November 2025.
Source: investors.mongodb.com30% Quarterly Growth
Q2 fiscal 2027 revenue rose 30% to $771.8M with GAAP net income of $40.9M.
Source: prnewswire.comMajor Acquisitions
WiredTiger
2014Acquired WiredTiger, a storage engine company founded by Berkeley DB creators Keith Bostic and Michael Cahill, to improve concurrency, compression, and reliability.
mLab
2018Acquired mLab, a managed MongoDB hosting provider, for $68 million to accelerate Atlas adoption.
Realm
2019Acquired the Realm mobile database for $39 million to add on-device data and sync capabilities.
Voyage AI
2025Acquired Voyage AI, a maker of embedding and reranking models, to improve retrieval accuracy for AI applications built on Atlas.
Keep researching MongoDB
MongoDB Company History FAQ
What are the major historical eras in MongoDB's evolution since 2007?
MongoDB's history spans key eras: the 10gen Founding and PaaS Prototyping Era (2007 to 2008), the Open-Source NoSQL Revolution and AGPL Release (2009 to 2013), the Enterprise Modernization and WiredTiger Engine (2014 to 2016 under Ittycheria), the 2017 NASDAQ IPO and Atlas Cloud Transformation (2017 to 2021), and the Multi-Cloud Developer Data Platform and GenAI Vector Era (2022, present).
When did 10gen officially rename itself MongoDB Inc. in 2013?
In August 2013, 10gen officially changed its corporate name to MongoDB, Inc., aligning its corporate identity with its globally famous open-source database and consolidating its brand before major enterprise expansion.
How did the launch of MongoDB Atlas in June 2016 transform the company's business model?
In June 2016, MongoDB unveiled MongoDB Atlas, a fully managed database-as-a-service on AWS, and later Azure and Google Cloud. Atlas transformed MongoDB from an on-premise software vendor into a hyperscale multi-cloud SaaS leader, scaling from zero to over $1.5 billion in ARR.
What was the landmark 2017 NASDAQ IPO that revitalized open-source tech?
On October 19, 2017, MongoDB listed on the NASDAQ (ticker: MDB) at $24 per share. Its rapid market debut proved that open-source infrastructure companies could build large, highly profitable, and durable enterprise SaaS businesses.
How did the 2018 introduction of the Server Side Public License (SSPL) reshape open-source licensing?
In October 2018, MongoDB boldly introduced the SSPL license, defending open-source creators against cloud hyperscalers who monetized open code without contributing upstream. The SSPL became a template adopted by other infrastructure leaders (like Elastic and Redis) to protect proprietary cloud models.
How did the 2018 to 2019 addition of Multi-Document ACID Transactions silence critics?
Historically, relational database advocates argued that NoSQL databases could not guarantee strict transactional consistency. In MongoDB 4.0 and 4.2, MongoDB implemented multi-document ACID transactions across replica sets and sharded clusters, proving that document databases could handle mission-critical banking and financial ledger workloads.
What was the 2023 launch of Atlas Vector Search for Generative AI applications?
In June 2023 at MongoDB .local NYC, then-CEO Dev Ittycheria unveiled Atlas Vector Search. The release enabled developers to build generative AI and RAG applications directly on MongoDB, storing LLM vector embeddings alongside application data and establishing MongoDB as an AI development standard.
How has MongoDB transformed modern software engineering over the past two decades?
MongoDB liberated generations of software developers from the constraints of 50-year-old relational tables, empowering millions of engineers worldwide to build web, mobile, and AI applications with speed, flexibility, and global multi-cloud scale.
How was MongoDB founded as 10gen in New York City in 2007?
MongoDB was founded in November 2007 in New York City by Dwight Merriman, Kevin Ryan, and Eliot Horowitz under the name 10gen. Having previously built DoubleClick (which served billions of ad impressions daily before being acquired by Google for $3.1B), the founders grew frustrated with the limitations of relational SQL databases. In 2009, they open-sourced their document-oriented data store as "MongoDB" (from humongous), renaming the company MongoDB, Inc. in 2013.
Why did MongoDB switch from the AGPL open-source license to the SSPL in 2018?
In October 2018, MongoDB introduced the Server Side Public License (SSPL) to protect its business against cloud hyperscalers (particularly Amazon Web Services). Cloud providers were taking MongoDB's free open-source software and offering it as a paid commercial managed service without contributing code back to the community. The SSPL mandated that anyone offering MongoDB as a commercial cloud service must open-source their entire management stack, compelling customers to adopt official MongoDB Atlas.
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