Couchbase was born from a merger of two small database startups in 2011. One was Membase, first called NorthScale. The other was CouchOne, built around CouchDB, the open-source database whose name stands for 'cluster of unreliable commodity hardware'. Together they sold a NoSQL database for apps that had to answer millions of users at once. When Couchbase went public in July 2021, its stock rose 27 percent on day one.

NoSQL for the Enterprise

NorthScale was founded in 2009 by James Phillips, Steve Yen, and Dustin Sallings. CouchOne grew from the work of Damien Katz, the creator of CouchDB. The merged company bet that big businesses would leave old relational databases for something faster and more flexible. Airlines, banks, and retailers used Couchbase to power apps. Its rival MongoDB went public first, in 2017.

Four Years on Nasdaq

Couchbase priced at $24 a share on July 21, 2021, above its range, and listed on Nasdaq as BASE. The stock closed its first day up about 27 percent, then drifted lower for years. In June 2025 Haveli Investments agreed to buy Couchbase for $24.50 a share in cash, about $1.5 billion. The deal closed in September 2025, and Couchbase went private.

Cover: The Corner of the Sofa, No. 3, Mary Cassatt. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a sofa (the couch).