What Valkey does

Valkey is an open-source, BSD 3-clause-licensed high-performance key/value datastore launched in 2024 under the Linux Foundation as a community fork of Redis. It was created by contributors from AWS, Google, Alibaba, Ericsson, Tencent, and Huawei eight days after Redis Ltd. shifted Redis to source-available licenses, with the explicit purpose of preserving a vendor-neutral, open-source in-memory datastore for cloud and enterprise use. The core product supports strings, numbers, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, and streams, and runs as a standalone daemon or in cluster mode with automatic sharding across 16384 hash slots and primary-replica replication. Valkey 9.1.0 achieves 2.1 million requests per second on a single server and supports up to 250 million keys per instance with sub-millisecond latency.

The project's product surface has expanded beyond the core datastore to include valkey-search, an official open-source module for native vector similarity search across billions of vectors, and Valkey Admin, an open-source observability and management tool for cluster visibility and troubleshooting. Valkey does not directly monetize the software; revenue is generated by ecosystem participants offering managed services, including AWS ElastiCache, Google Cloud Memorystore for Valkey (GA April 2025), Oracle OCI Cache, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and independent vendors such as Percona, Aiven, Momento, DigitalOcean, Heroku, UpCloud, anynines, and NetApp Instaclustr. Notable production deployments include Fox (via Momento) handling 16 million concurrent viewers during the 2025 Super Bowl, Major League Baseball, and Bandai Namco Studios.

The go-to-market is community-led, with governance provided by a Technical Steering Committee including representatives from AWS (Committee Chair Madelyn Olson), Google Cloud, Oracle, Percona, Apple, Ericsson, Alibaba, and Tencent. Distribution is global across all major cloud platforms and managed service providers, with over 80 contributors to the 9.1.0 release and 500+ community members spanning major technology companies and individual developers. The project is marketed through GitHub, Slack, technical blogs, documentation, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, BlueSky, newsletters, community meetups, and industry events such as the Unlocked Seattle conference.

Name

Valkey

Legal name

Valkey (LF Projects, LLC)

Website

https://valkey.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2024

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Valkey is a Linux Foundation open-source BSD-licensed key/value datastore forked from Redis in 2024, serving developers, cloud providers, and enterprises needing high-performance caching, message queues, and primary database workloads.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open-source in-memory key-value database

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Key-Value Stores (HDAEAAAH)

akta.pro secondary industry

Database Tools & Ecosystem (Replication, Backup/Recovery, HA/DR, Monitoring) (HDAEAAAO)

Keywords

• Open source database
• Key value store
• In memory caching
• Vector similarity search
• Redis alternative

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Open Source Distribution: Valkey is freely available under BSD 3-clause license. The project does not directly monetize the open-source software. Revenue is generated by ecosystem participants (cloud providers, managed service providers) who build commercial services around Valkey.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels17 records

Marketing channels11 records

Core offering

Valkey is an open-source (BSD 3-clause) high-performance key/value datastore maintained under the Linux Foundation as a community fork of Redis. It supports a rich set of data types (strings, numbers, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, streams) and use cases including caching, message queues, session storage, and primary database operations. The project is distributed for free via GitHub, Docker Hub, and binary downloads, and is also offered through managed services by AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Alibaba, Tencent, Percona, Aiven, Momento, and other providers.

Product overview

Valkey is an open-source (BSD) high-performance key/value datastore backed by the Linux Foundation. The core product supports multiple deployment modes (standalone, cluster, with replication and high availability) and rich data types. The ecosystem includes valkey-search, an official open-source module adding native vector similarity search for AI applications, and Valkey Admin, a desktop and containerized observability and management tool. Valkey is available through multiple managed service providers including AWS ElastiCache, Google Cloud Memorystore, Alibaba Cloud, Percona, Aiven, and others.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Valkey Open-source (BSD 3-clause) high-performance key/value datastore backed by the Linux Foundation. Supports caching, message queues, session storage, and primary database workloads with rich data types, standalone or cluster deployment, replication, high availability, Lua scripting, and module extensibility.
• valkey-search Official open-source module that adds native vector similarity search to Valkey, enabling semantic search, fraud detection, and AI applications. Supports hybrid queries combining vector similarity with structured filtering, scales horizontally and through replicas, and handles billions of vectors with millisecond latencies.
• Valkey Admin Open-source observability and management tool for Valkey clusters, providing real-time cluster dashboards, topology visualization, key browser across 7 data types, hot key detection, and aggregated command logs. Available as a native desktop app (macOS, Linux) and as a containerized web deployment (Docker, Kubernetes).

Quantifiable outcome

• 2.1 million requests per second on single server (Valkey 9.1)
• +7 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability5 records

Feature18 records

Partnerships

19 partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• PerconacoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPercona provides Valkey expertise with support and project-based consulting services. They contribute to the project as Valkey participants and have team members on the Technical Steering Committee (Lucas Yang). They also offer managed Valkey services and employ technical educators for Valkey documentation.
• Alibaba CloudcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerAlibaba Cloud, established in 2009, offers complete cloud services including elastic computing, database, storage, machine learning and AI services. Leading public cloud IaaS provider in Asia-Pacific (Gartner) and globally (IDC) since 2018. Alibaba has been a founding participant in the Valkey project with a contributor on the Technical Steering Committee (Zhao Zhao).
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerAWS offers Amazon ElastiCache, a fully managed Valkey-compatible service delivering real-time, cost-optimized performance. AWS team members Madelyn Olson (Committee Chair) and others actively contribute to Valkey. AWS contributes through product management, engineering, and developer advocacy roles.
• Google CloudcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerGoogle Cloud offers Memorystore for Valkey, a fully managed in-memory database service with 99.99% availability SLA, Valkey 8.0 support, and integrated vector similarity search. Google Cloud engineer Jacob Murphy is on the Technical Steering Committee. They announced general availability of Memorystore for Valkey in April 2025.
• OraclecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOracle Cloud Infrastructure offers OCI Cache for Valkey with sub-millisecond latency. Oracle engineer Ping Xie is on the Technical Steering Committee. Oracle contributes engineering resources to the Valkey project.
• EricssoncoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerEricsson, founded in 1876, is a Swedish communication technology and services provider. Ericsson engineer Viktor Soderqvist is a maintainer and author on the Valkey project. Ericsson was one of the founding participants when Valkey launched.
• ByteDancecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerByteDance, founded in 2012, is a founding participant in the Valkey project. Known for TikTok, CapCut, Lark, and Pico products, ByteDance contributes to ensuring open-source database solutions remain available for the ecosystem.
• AivencoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorAiven offers Aiven for Valkey, a managed in-memory NoSQL database built on open-source Valkey, compatible with legacy Redis OSS. Aiven participates as a Valkey project contributor.
• MomentocoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorMomento offers serverless caching and managed Valkey services built on the Valkey storage engine. Co-founder Daniela Miao is active in the Valkey community and contributes insights on Valkey for high-scale infrastructure. Momento provides VPC deployment options for enterprise governance.
• DigitalOceanminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorDigitalOcean offers Managed Caching for Valkey, a fully managed, high-performance in-memory key/value datastore. Valkey available as part of DigitalOcean's managed database offerings.
• HerokuminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorHeroku (Salesforce) offers Heroku Key-Value Store, a robust scalable in-memory datastore powered by Valkey and compatible with Redis OSS.
• Tencent CloudcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorTencent Cloud offers Distributed Cache service compatible with Redis OSS, Valkey, and Memcached engines. Tencent engineer Binbin Zhu is on the Technical Steering Committee. Tencent was a founding participant in the Valkey project.
• UpCloudminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorUpCloud offers Valkey on their GDPR-compliant cloud with fully managed service, expert maintenance, and global reach.
• anyninesminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributoranynines offers a9s KeyValue, a managed in-memory NoSQL database built on open-source Valkey, fully compatible with legacy Redis OSS.
• k0rdentminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributork0rdent offers Valkey as a service template on their application catalog for validated deployment on managed clusters.
• BetterDBminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorBetterDB is the first monitoring platform built specifically for Valkey, leveraging Valkey-exclusive features like COMMANDLOG, per-slot metrics, and async I/O threading visibility.
• NetApp InstaclustrminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorNetApp Instaclustr offers managed Valkey service with automated features, 24x7 expert support, and enterprise-grade processes.
• ApplecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerApple engineer Harkrishn Patro is on the Technical Steering Committee, contributing to Valkey's governance and development.
• Linux FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe Linux Foundation backs Valkey, ensuring it will remain open source forever under BSD 3-clause license. The foundation provides governance, infrastructure, and project management for the Valkey community.

Scale indicators11 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• SingleStore: SingleStore (formerly MemSQL) is a distributed SQL database with in-memory rowstore capabilities for low-latency key-value and caching workloads. Targets similar real-time application segments as Valkey but with a SQL-first architecture and commercial support model.
• Aerospike: Aerospike is a commercial real-time NoSQL database with hybrid memory/flash storage, used for caching and high-throughput key-value workloads at scale. Competes with Valkey in performance-critical, low-latency enterprise use cases (ad-tech, fintech) though with a different storage architecture and pricing model.
• Couchbase: Couchbase is a commercial distributed NoSQL document/key-value database with in-memory caching tiers. Competes with Valkey for low-latency key-value workloads in enterprise deployments where customers need a single platform combining cache, document store, and query capabilities.
• TiKV: TiKV is an open-source, distributed, transactional key-value database originally created by PingCAP. Targets similar scale-out key-value use cases as Valkey but with persistent storage (RocksDB backend) and strong consistency, used as the storage layer for TiDB.
• ScyllaDB: ScyllaDB offers a C++-rewritten, shard-per-core NoSQL database compatible with Cassandra and Redis APIs. Targets the same latency-sensitive key-value and caching workloads as Valkey, particularly where users want a drop-in Redis replacement with significantly higher per-node throughput.
• Hazelcast: Hazelcast provides a commercial in-memory data grid with distributed caching and key-value capabilities. Targets enterprise use cases (session storage, distributed cache, leaderboards) that overlap with Valkey, but Hazelcast emphasizes Java/JVM integration, stream processing, and embedded deployment models.
• GridGain: GridGain is the commercial company behind Apache Ignite, an in-memory data fabric offering distributed key-value caching, compute, and SQL capabilities. Competes with Valkey for enterprise caching and distributed in-memory workloads, particularly in financial services and high-throughput transactional systems.

Direct peers

• Redis: Redis Inc. develops Redis, the original open-source in-memory key-value datastore from which Valkey forked in 2024. Same command API, same data structures, same workload profile (caching, sessions, pub/sub); now competing on licensing model (Redis: source-available; Valkey: BSD) and on managed-service offerings.
• DragonflyDB: DragonflyDB is a modern Redis-compatible in-memory datastore built on a multi-threaded architecture. Targets the same workloads as Valkey (caching, primary KV store) and the same Redis-replacement buyer, competing head-to-head for hyperscaler-independent deployments and OSS migrations.
• KeyDB: KeyDB is an open-source, Redis-compatible fork emphasizing multi-threading and performance. Originally acquired by Snap, it remains an active Redis API-compatible alternative targeting the same cache-and-primary-KV workloads as Valkey, particularly in latency-sensitive deployments.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/valkey_io
• GitHubgithub.com/valkey-io
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@valkeyproject
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/valkey

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Valkey