MongoDB overview
MongoDB Inc. builds and sells MongoDB, a database that stores information as flexible, JSON-like documents instead of the rows and columns used by relational systems such as Oracle Database and MySQL. Developers can download the Community Server free of charge, and the company earns its money from two commercial offerings: MongoDB Atlas, a managed cloud service that runs on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and Enterprise Advanced, a subscription edition for organizations that operate the database on their own infrastructure.
The business began in New York City in 2007 under the name 10gen. All three founders came from the online advertising firm DoubleClick: its co-founder and former chief technology officer Dwight Merriman, its former chief executive Kevin P. Ryan and engineer Eliot Horowitz. They first set out to build a cloud platform for running applications from open-source parts, but found no database that suited the design and wrote their own. In February 2009, 10gen published MongoDB, a name taken from the word “humongous”, as open-source software and dropped the platform to sell support and services around the database. The company adopted the MongoDB Inc. name in August 2013.
Max Schireson replaced Merriman as chief executive in 2013, and Dev Ittycheria took over in 2014 and ran the company for 11 years. During his tenure MongoDB bought the storage engine developer WiredTiger in 2014, launched Atlas in 2016 and went public on the Nasdaq in October 2017, raising $192 million. In October 2018 it moved new versions of the database to its own Server Side Public License, aimed at large cloud vendors that offered MongoDB as a service while giving little back to the project. It also bought the database hosting company mLab in 2018 and the mobile database maker Realm in 2019. Atlas grew into the main business, rising to 73% of revenue in fiscal 2026.
Recent strategy has centered on artificial intelligence. MongoDB added vector search to Atlas in 2023 and in February 2025 bought Voyage AI, a maker of embedding and reranking models, for about $220 million. In November 2025, CJ Desai, previously president of product and engineering at Cloudflare and before that president and chief operating officer of ServiceNow, succeeded Ittycheria as chief executive. For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, MongoDB reported revenue of about $2.46 billion, up 23% from the year before, and had 5,636 employees and more than 65,200 customers in over 100 countries. By the end of July 2026 its customer count had passed 70,600.
Software by MongoDB
2 products profiled, from MongoDB (2009) to MongoDB Atlas (2016).
MongoDB history and milestones
- 2007
Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin P. Ryan found 10gen in New York City to build a cloud platform for applications.
- 2009
10gen releases MongoDB as open-source software in February and turns its attention to the database.
- 2013
Max Schireson succeeds Dwight Merriman as CEO, and 10gen changes its name to MongoDB Inc. in August.
- 2014
Dev Ittycheria becomes CEO, and MongoDB acquires WiredTiger, whose storage engine later becomes the database’s default.
- 2016
MongoDB launches Atlas, a fully managed database service that initially runs on Amazon Web Services.
- 2017
MongoDB goes public on the Nasdaq in October under the ticker MDB, raising $192 million.
- 2018
MongoDB moves new releases to the Server Side Public License and buys database hosting provider mLab for $68 million.
- 2019
MongoDB acquires Realm, the developer of a mobile database, for $39 million.
- 2020
Co-founder Eliot Horowitz steps down as CTO, and Atlas begins offering clusters that span several cloud providers.
- 2023
MongoDB introduces Atlas Vector Search, which stores and queries the embeddings used by AI applications.
- 2025
MongoDB acquires Voyage AI for about $220 million, and former Cloudflare executive CJ Desai succeeds Dev Ittycheria as CEO.
- 2026
MongoDB reports fiscal 2026 revenue of about $2.46 billion and releases version 8.3 of its database in May.
Who founded MongoDB?
Dwight Merriman
Co-founder; CEO of 10gen until 2013 and a MongoDB director
Dwight Merriman studied at Miami University and helped found DoubleClick, the online advertising company, where he spent a decade as chief technology officer. He went on to co-found several New York internet businesses, many of them with Kevin P. Ryan, including the shopping search site ShopWiki, the flash-sale retailer Gilt Groupe and the news publication Business Insider.
Merriman served as 10gen’s chief executive while MongoDB was establishing itself as an open-source project. In January 2013 he handed the CEO role to Max Schireson and became chairman, concentrating mainly on technology. He continues to sit on MongoDB Inc.’s board of directors.
Eliot Horowitz
Co-founder; chief technology officer from 2007 to 2020
Eliot Horowitz studied computer science at Brown University and began his career as a software developer in DoubleClick’s research and development group. He then co-founded ShopWiki with Dwight Merriman, building the system it used to crawl online stores and pull out product data, and in 2006 BusinessWeek put him on its list of the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25.
As MongoDB’s chief technology officer for 13 years, Horowitz ran its engineering and product teams. He gave up the CTO post and his board seat in July 2020 while staying on as a technical adviser, and that year he founded Viam, a New York company that makes a software platform for building and operating robots.
Kevin P. Ryan
Co-founder; former chief executive of DoubleClick
Kevin P. Ryan earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale University and an MBA at INSEAD. He joined DoubleClick in 1996 as president and chief operating officer, became its chief executive in 2000 and left after the company was sold in 2005.
After DoubleClick, Ryan concentrated on starting new companies in New York, often alongside Dwight Merriman. Together they co-founded 10gen, the online retailer Gilt Groupe and Business Insider, which they launched with Henry Blodget, and they set up AlleyCorp, a firm that incubates and invests in startups.
How MongoDB makes money
MongoDB earns nearly all of its revenue from subscriptions, which take two main forms. Atlas, the cloud service, is billed on consumption: customers pay for the size and number of clusters they run, storage, backups, data transfer and add-on services, either pay-as-you-go, including through the AWS, Google Cloud and Azure marketplaces, or under negotiated annual and multiyear commitments. Atlas generated 73% of total revenue in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, compared with 66% two years earlier, so the volume of traffic running through customers’ applications directly affects MongoDB’s quarterly results.
Enterprise Advanced, the edition for companies that run MongoDB in their own data centers or cloud accounts, is sold as a term subscription that bundles a commercial license, management software such as Ops Manager and the Kubernetes Operator, enterprise security features and support. It produced 20% of fiscal 2026 revenue, and professional services such as consulting and training made up about 3%. The Community Server itself is free, but its more than 700 million downloads since 2009 give the company a large base of developers who can later become paying customers.
Who owns and runs MongoDB?
CJ Desai has been MongoDB’s president and chief executive officer since November 10, 2025. He succeeded Dev Ittycheria, who had led the company since 2014, took it public in 2017 and remains on the board. Tom Killalea, a former Amazon executive who was that company’s first chief information security officer, has chaired the board since July 2019, and co-founder Dwight Merriman is also a director. MongoDB is a public company listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker MDB, so it is owned by its shareholders and has no parent company.
- CJ DesaiPresident and chief executive officer
- Tom KillaleaChair of the board
- Dev IttycheriaBoard member; CEO from 2014 to 2025
- Dwight MerrimanCo-founder and board member
- Eliot HorowitzCo-founder; CTO until 2020
MongoDB: frequently asked questions
Who founded MongoDB?
MongoDB was founded in 2007 in New York City by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin P. Ryan, who had all worked at the online advertising company DoubleClick. The company was originally called 10gen and planned to build a cloud application platform before focusing on the MongoDB database, which it released as open-source software in 2009. It took the name MongoDB Inc. in 2013.
Who owns MongoDB?
MongoDB Inc. is a publicly traded company listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker MDB, so it is owned by its shareholders, including large institutional investors. It has been public since its October 2017 initial public offering and is not controlled by a parent company. Co-founder Dwight Merriman and former CEO Dev Ittycheria both sit on its board of directors.
Who is the CEO of MongoDB?
Chirantan “CJ” Desai is the CEO of MongoDB. He took over on November 10, 2025, from Dev Ittycheria, who had run the company since 2014. Desai was previously president of product and engineering at Cloudflare and president and chief operating officer of ServiceNow, and he earlier held roles at EMC, Symantec and Oracle.
Where is MongoDB headquartered?
MongoDB is headquartered in New York City, where it was founded in 2007. Its head office is at 1633 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, a building known as Paramount Plaza. The company also runs offices in other countries, and 2,927 of its 5,636 employees were based outside the United States at the end of January 2026.
What software does MongoDB make?
MongoDB’s main product is the MongoDB document database, offered as the free Community Server, the commercial Enterprise Advanced edition and MongoDB Atlas, a managed service on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Around the database it provides full-text search, vector search, stream processing, the Compass graphical client, the mongosh shell, official language drivers and Voyage AI embedding models.
Is MongoDB a public company?
Yes. MongoDB Inc. went public on the Nasdaq in October 2017 under the ticker MDB, raising $192 million in its initial public offering. For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, the company reported revenue of about $2.46 billion, an increase of 23% over the previous year.
How does MongoDB make money?
MongoDB makes most of its money from subscriptions. Its Atlas cloud database is billed according to usage and accounted for 73% of revenue in fiscal 2026, while Enterprise Advanced, a subscription for self-managed deployments that includes support and management tools, contributed 20%. Professional services such as consulting and training added about 3%, and the Community Server is free to use.
Sources
- MongoDB, Inc. annual report on Form 10-K, fiscal 2026 sec.gov
- MongoDB, Inc. announces fourth quarter fiscal 2026 financial results prnewswire.com
- MongoDB announces leadership transition mongodb.com
- MongoDB, Inc. 2026 proxy statement sec.gov
- MongoDB buys Voyage AI for $220 million to bolster AI search, Bloomberg bloomberg.com
- MongoDB Inc., Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org
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