Open-source permissions database with managed cloud offering
AuthZed builds SpiceDB, an open-source permissions database modeled after Google's Zanzibar, plus a managed cloud control plane. The stack is heavily backend-focused (Go, Rust, C/C++, Zig) with minimal frontend surface (React, Next.js) — typical for a database-first company. Active projects span infrastructure automation, observability, and query optimization, but hiring remains engineering-heavy (12 of 15 roles) with only 2 sales roles, suggesting early product-market fit in developer adoption over sales-driven expansion.
AuthZed provides a permissions system designed for organizations building fine-grained authorization at scale. The company maintains SpiceDB as an open-source project while offering a managed cloud service (AuthZed Cloud) with a control plane, observability platform, and multi-cloud Kubernetes infrastructure. Founded in 2020 and backed by Y Combinator (W21), the company operates with a small, senior-heavy team based in New York. Current focus areas include infrastructure scaling, materialized view maintenance, and query planning optimization to handle complex end-user permission models in mission-critical applications.
Backend: SpiceDB, Go, Rust, C/C++, Zig, Kubernetes, Docker. Frontend: React, Next.js. Infrastructure: Kubernetes (actively adopting), REST APIs, CI/CD. Operations: HubSpot, Git.
Core work: SpiceDB database features, query planning optimization, materialized view maintenance. Infrastructure: multi-cloud Kubernetes automation, observability platform for global customers. Product: authzed cloud control plane, frontend platform features.
Other companies in the same industry, closest in size