EnterpriseDB (EDB), the leading Postgres^® data and AI company, today announced its key contributions to PostgreSQL 18, the newest release of what has ranked for multiple consecutive years as the world’s most loved, most wanted, and most used database.

According to EDB’s global Sovereignty Matters research with executives, 35% of enterprises are considering PostgreSQL for their next generation of AI workloads, and those who treat sovereignty over their data and AI as mission critical are seeing 12.5x greater ROI than those still in pilot mode. PostgreSQL 18 builds on this momentum with more than 200 new features that make it easier for organizations to run secure, high-performance, and portable applications across hybrid environments.

“PostgreSQL 18 is a milestone for developers and data teams who need a database that can keep up with the demands of AI and intelligent applications,” said Jozef de Vries, chief product engineering officer at EDB. “Our contributions—ranging from OAuth authentication to optimizer enhancements and Kubernetes-friendly extension management—make it easier for teams to adopt Postgres at scale and manage it in complex, distributed environments.”

EDB contributed numerous patches to PostgreSQL 18, with more people participating in this release than in any other in the company’s history. “That kind of growth shows how deeply EDB is invested in the health and future of Postgres,” said de Vries.

EDB’s contributions to PostgreSQL include:

Open standards and security

• OAuth authentication: Adds integration with enterprise identity systems (Okta, Keycloak, LDAP), centralizing credentials and reducing operational overhead.
• SQL standards improvements: Virtual generated columns and enhanced NOT NULL constraints, making Postgres more portable and standards compliant.

Performance

• Optimizer enhancements: Faster query execution with lower memory consumption, enabling better performance out of the box for analytical and transactional workloads.

Ecosystem enablement

• Dynamic extension loading – New extension_control_path feature allows extensions to be loaded from multiple directories, simplifying Kubernetes and containerized deployments. This accelerates DevOps automation and supports hybrid enterprise deployment patterns.
• Support for new index types: Opens the door for vector and analytics-focused index development to take place outside of Postgres, delivering faster innovation, performance gains, and long-term extensibility for specialized workloads.

“I enjoy working at a company that prioritizes long-term investments in the Postgres community alongside short-term feature work,” said Jacob Champion, PostgreSQL major contributor and principal engineer at EDB. “EDB sees daily community work as essential, and so we get to help move the project forward together with everyone."

“After more than two decades contributing to Postgres, I’m still finding things that should be better,” said Álvaro Herrera, PostgreSQL major contributor and esteemed senior principal engineer at EDB. “In Postgres 18, the wider development community laid a framework that not only improves performance now, but will let us re-architect key parts of the system for much better scalability in the future. The contributor team at EDB is happy to have the chance to be a part of that.”

Empowering the next generation of intelligent applications

EDB’s contributions to PostgreSQL 18 reflect its mission to make Postgres the foundation for enterprise data and AI platforms. To help teams accelerate their AI adoption, EDB has released an O’Reilly book, Building a Data and AI Platform with PostgreSQL, which explores the prerequisites and architectural patterns for building sovereign, scalable, and intelligent systems with Postgres at the core.

Looking ahead

EDB is already contributing to PostgreSQL 19 development and preparing to release EDB Postgres AI Database, which will add enterprise-grade features such as data redaction and masking, password profile enforcement, observability enhancements, and expanded Oracle compatibility to address the most demanding workloads.

As organizations prepare to run more of their mission-critical workloads on Postgres, EDB is making it easier to deliver secure, scalable, and intelligent systems. Learn more about EDB Postgres AI Database, the always-on sovereign Postgres database built for transactional, analytical, and AI workloads.

About EDB

EDB Postgres^® AI (EDB PG AI) is the first open, enterprise-grade sovereign data and AI platform—secure, compliant, and scalable, on-premises and across clouds. Built on Postgres, the world’s leading database, EDB PG AI unifies transactional, analytical, and AI workloads, enabling organizations to operationalize their data and LLMs while maintaining control over sovereign environments. EDB PG AI is supported by a global partner network and delivers up to 99.999% availability as well as hybrid management and a built-in AI factory. As one of the most active contributors to the PostgreSQL project, EDB is deeply invested in the vitality of the global community. To learn more, visit www.enterprisedb.com.

EnterpriseDB and EDB are registered trademarks of EnterpriseDB Corporation. Postgres and PostgreSQL are registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada and used with their permission. All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners.

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