Michael Widenius

Founding member of the MySQL AB company, CTO of the MariaDB Corporation AB, Founder & general partner at OpenOcean

Ulf Michael Widenius is a Finnish software engineer and entrepreneur best known as the main author of the MySQL database. He founded TCX DataKonsult AB in 1985, which was a Swedish data warehousing company. In 1995, he began writing the first version of the MySQL database with David Axmark, which was released in 1996.

Until the sale of MySQL AB to Sun Microsystems in 2008, Widenius served as its CTO, continuing to be a key figure in the ongoing development of MySQL. In 2008, he established venture capital firm OpenOcean with MySQL co-founder Patrik Backman and others. Widenius founded Monty Program AB after leaving Sun, which forked MySQL into MariaDB.

He is currently CTO of the MariaDB Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and advancing the MariaDB codebase, community, and ecosystem. Widenius has received numerous awards, including the Finnish Software Entrepreneur of the Year prize in 2003.