IBM Enters OEM Partnership with Cockroach Labs to Deliver Cloud-Native Resilience for the AI Era

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2025 — Cockroach Labs, the company behind the distributed SQL database CockroachDB, today announced an OEM partnership with IBM to bring CockroachDB PostgreSQL for IBM to market. This collaboration gives enterprises a trusted path to modernize mission-critical applications with a cloud-native PostgreSQL database engineered for active-active business continuity across hybrid environments—including IBM LinuxONE, Linux on Z, Power Systems, and Red Hat OpenShift—as well as major public clouds and other distributed platforms.

For decades, IBM has helped the world’s largest enterprises run mission-critical workloads with unmatched resilience, scale, and trust. Db2 for z/OS remains the gold standard for transactional integrity on IBM Z, powering industries where downtime is not an option. But enterprise demands are evolving. Organizations are building containerized applications on Kubernetes, adopting hybrid cloud for flexibility, and preparing for an AI-driven future, where real-time, resilient data isn’t optional, it’s essential.

“The modernization journey can’t wait. Enterprises today face unprecedented pressure to deliver always-on experiences, meet rigorous compliance standards, and unlock real-time data for AI,” said Spencer Kimball, CEO and co-founder of Cockroach Labs. “Through our partnership with IBM, we’re combining CockroachDB’s cloud-native, distributed architecture with the resilience and security of IBM’s enterprise platforms – bringing resilience, scale, and AI-readiness to the environments where they already run their most important systems.”

Modern Demands, Modern Architecture: Why CockroachDB

CockroachDB was purpose-built to solve the challenges of running relational workloads in cloud-native environments. By combining PostgreSQL compatibility with a distributed architecture, CockroachDB delivers:

• Always-on availability across zones, regions, or clouds
• Enterprise-grade security with encryption and compliance, enhanced by IBM LinuxONE’s quantum-safe protections
• Elastic scale without re-architecting
• Geo-partitioning for data locality and global regulatory compliance

For IBM, integrating CockroachDB means providing enterprises a trusted way to modernize without compromise, bridging their core s390x-enabled systems on IBM Z and LinuxONE with the flexibility of IBM Power Systems, Red Hat OpenShift, and IBM Cloud.

Extending IBM’s Hybrid Cloud Leadership

“Our partnership with Cockroach Labs brings distributed SQL innovation directly into IBM’s hybrid cloud and enterprise platforms,” said Martin Oberhofer, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at IBM. “By combining CockroachDB’s cloud-native resilience with IBM’s trusted technologies like LinuxONE and Linux on Z, we’re giving clients a modernization path that feels familiar with PostgreSQL yet is built for the future. Together, we empower enterprises to run mission-critical workloads with security, efficiency, and the scalability demanded by the AI era.”

This OEM agreement extends IBM’s data leadership across its platforms:

• LinuxONE & IBM Z: Pairing CockroachDB’s distributed SQL with LinuxONE’s pervasive encryption, AI-infused Telum processors, and energy efficiency.
• Red Hat OpenShift: Seamless Kubernetes-native operations, enabling portability across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• IBM Cloud & Power Systems: A consistent foundation for enterprises modernizing mission-critical apps while maintaining governance and control.

Together, these capabilities provide enterprises a modernization path that feels familiar—with PostgreSQL at the developer layer—yet future-ready, with the resilience and scale demanded by AI-era workloads.

What This Means for Enterprises

The IBM + CockroachDB OEM gives enterprises a modern path forward—enabling them to move to cloud-native and Kubernetes environments without rewriting core applications. Built for always-on resilience, CockroachDB delivers distributed scale and zero RPO by default, now fully supported on IBM’s most trusted platforms.

It’s also architected for AI. With real-time CDC streaming into watsonx.data and support for pgvector, CockroachDB powers both transactional and vector workloads—making it ideal for AI use cases like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

By consolidating fragmented workloads onto CockroachDB on IBM LinuxONE, enterprises can simplify operations, reduce risk, and modernize with confidence—all without compromising performance, compliance, or control.

To learn more about the IBM and Cockroach Labs partnership and how CockroachDB on IBM LinuxONE can help modernize your enterprise applications, visit https://www.cockroachlabs.com/partners/ibm.

About Cockroach Labs

Cockroach Labs is a pioneering software company at the forefront of database technology, dedicated to delivering resilient and scalable database solutions to run mission-critical workloads for the world’s most important businesses. The company’s clients include Form3, Hard Rock Digital, and Shipt, Fortune 50 global financial institutions as well as retail and media industry leaders. With a mission to scale when others fail, Cockroach Labs is revolutionizing the way businesses manage their data with its innovative cloud native distributed SQL database, CockroachDB.

Source: Cockroach Labs