Startup profile for PlanetScale: latest funding, latest known valuation, total disclosed funding, investors, status, sources, and why the company is interesting. Part of the Venture Capital Tracker startup directory.
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PlanetScale funding, valuation and investors

Serverless MySQL-compatible database platform with branching and Vitess scaling.

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Funding, valuation & investors

Answer-first snapshot

Latest funding

Series B

$30M · 2021

Latest known valuation

Not publicly disclosed

Total disclosed equity funding

$80M

Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.

Current status

private

growth · San Francisco, California, USA

Investors in latest funding

Lead: Insight Partners

Other: Andreessen Horowitz

Sources: latest funding Last verified: 2026-07-25

Overview

PlanetScale offers MySQL-compatible serverless databases built on Vitess, with git-like schema branching, non-blocking schema changes, and horizontal sharding. Founded by Saml Au Yeong and the team behind Vitess (originally YouTube's MySQL scaling layer). Series B ($30M, 2021) led by Insight Partners; Series C ($50M) led by Kleiner Perkins with a16z participation.

Why PlanetScale is interesting

Ex-YouTube Vitess team productized branching workflows — Insight and Kleiner led $80M (2021) with a16z participating as devtools infra for cloud-native SQL.

Product & use cases

PlanetScale Database provides production MySQL with branch/merge workflows, connection pooling, and managed Vitess operations — targeting teams outgrowing single-instance RDS.

  • Scaling MySQL workloads without manual sharding
  • Zero-downtime schema migrations
  • Database branching for preview environments
  • Multi-region MySQL via Vitess

Key facts

  • Series C (2021): $50M led by Kleiner; a16z and Insight in prior rounds
  • Built on open-source Vitess from YouTube
  • Database branching for dev/prod workflows

Funding history (newest first)

Series B

2021 $30M

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210617PlanetScaleSeriesB

Series C

2021 $50M

Source: https://planetscale.com/blog/series-c

Investors in our directory

Funds linked from PlanetScale's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.

Andreessen Horowitz Kleiner Perkins Insight Partners

Competitive landscape

Edge: Vitess pedigree from YouTube scale; branching UX unique among SQL hosts at launch.

Serverless SQL market split Postgres (Neon, Supabase) vs MySQL (PlanetScale). PlanetScale bet Vitess + branching wins teams already on MySQL at scale.

  • Amazon RDS/Aurora incumbent

    Default AWS MySQL; PlanetScale adds branching and Vitess ops.

  • Supabase/Neon adjacent

    Postgres serverless competitors for different SQL preference.

  • CockroachDB adjacent

    Distributed SQL with different consistency model.

Notable stories

  • PlanetScale founders helped create Vitess at YouTube — rare infra team productizing their own scaling layer as managed cloud.

Industries

Infrastructure & Cloud Developer Tools Enterprise SaaS

FAQs about PlanetScale

Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.

PlanetScale is a serverless MySQL platform built on Vitess with branching, scaling, and non-blocking schema changes.
a16z (/fund/andreessen-horowitz), Kleiner (/fund/kleiner-perkins), and Insight (/fund/insight-partners) participated across 2021 rounds.
Open-source MySQL sharding system originally built at YouTube; PlanetScale commercializes managed Vitess.
RDS is managed MySQL instance; PlanetScale adds Vitess horizontal scaling and git-like database branches.
Create isolated DB branches for dev/staging schema changes, then merge to production — similar to git workflows.
Supabase is Postgres-centric; PlanetScale is MySQL/Vitess-centric.
Team includes Vitess creators; Saml Au Yeong among leadership — see planetscale.com/about.
$80M+ across Series B ($30M) and C ($50M) in 2021 plus earlier seed.
Vitess is open source; PlanetScale managed service is commercial.
No — MySQL-compatible via Vitess only.
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