TL;DR: I'm leaving Databend to join LanceDB.

Thank you, Databend

I still remember the day I spoke with Bohu about joining Databend. It was a winter day with the sun shining brightly (Actually, I don't really remember if it was sunny and bright). We talked a bit about data warehouses, Rust, Snowflake, and open source. It was a time before AI, lakehouses, and table formats.

In the years at Databend, I went through my fastest growth both in life and in tech.

During my years at Databend, I married my wife, who has become the center of my life. We bought a cozy house near Tianjin, where we live with our two lovely dogs (Naihu and Theo) . Databend witnessed every major milestone in my personal life.

At the same time, Databend stood behind every milestone in my career.

OpenDAL entered and then graduated from the ASF Incubator; I was nominated as an ASF Member, and I was invited as a committer for iceberg-rust, etc. If QingCloud was a school that taught me how to work, then Databend is the place that allowed me to shine and fully realize my potential.

Databend is now entering a new and steadier phase, exactly what we set out to build back in that Rust-and-Snowflake conversation with Bohu. My heartbeat is still synced to the 0 → 1 phase. Designing protocols, chasing regressions, turning bold ideas into first commits. So I chose to hand over my modules while everything is smooth. I leave with deep gratitude, knowing that Databend's codebase, and the friendships behind it, will continue to grow long after I step aside.

My next adventure is LanceDB, where vector lakes meet Rust. Different waves, same ocean.

Hello, LanceDB

Readers may know that my personal vision is Data Freedom, and I am currently working on Rewriting Big Data in Rust. I really don't want to work at a big tech company (honestly, I'm not sure I could pass the interview), and I also don't want to become a competitor to Databend (even though they haven't asked me to sign an NCC—I just don't want to).

LanceDB appeared: LanceDB is an open-source multimodal database designed for efficient storage, retrieval, and management of vectors and multimodal data. It's quite appealing to me to create a new format that could set the standard for the new AI era. Concretely, Lance's columnar container layout and on-disk HNSW index open a playground for Rust-level SIMD tuning, exactly the kind of hard-core storage work I've been missing. I would have the opportunity to work on low-level storage optimizations to support vector search and unstructured data storage. This would also be a great chance to learn many new things.

LanceDB is strongly committed to open source. By joining LanceDB, I could stay active in many open source communities like opendal, arrow, datafusion, iceberg, and even databend in the future. I could still connect them all to build something truly fantastic.

Joining LanceDB feels like the most straightforward way to achieve that vision of Data Freedom, one vector at a time.

TL;DR in one line: grateful waves goodbye, curious waves hello. See you at the next PR review — perhaps in LanceDB, perhaps back in Databend, always in open source.