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Databricks has acquired Electric, integrating its PGlite WASM Postgres and real-time sync engine to extend Postgres capabilities from the lakehouse to the edge for AI agent sandboxes, addressing the need for distributed state and real-time data synchronization in agentic applications. Announced August 11, 2026, by Databricks engineers Stas Kelvich, Yan Leshinsky, Nikita Shamgunov, and cofounder Reynold Xin, the move brings purpose-built data primitives for agents: PGlite gives each agent a lightweight Postgres database running locally in sandboxes, browsers, or devices, providing ultra-low latency access to context. Electric’s real-time sync engine continuously synchronizes distributed state back to Databricks’ Lakebase, enabling teams of agents to collaborate without stale or conflicting data. PGlite has grown from 1 million to 13 million weekly downloads in 12 months, reflecting demand for embeddable Postgres. Unlike traditional applications with predictable queries, agents decide data needs at runtime, update context multiple times per second, run in sandboxed environments, and work in groups requiring shared, current views. Electric’s sync architecture, similar to collaborative apps like Google Docs and Figma, keeps agents in sync while centralizing control in Lakebase Postgres on cheap, durable object storage. Both Electric and Lakebase are built on Postgres, the open-source database standard for AI agents. PGlite was originally based on WASM Postgres work by Stas Kelvich (co-founder of Neon), which Electric turned into a production-ready embeddable database. The acquisition reunites these efforts and strengthens Databricks’ leadership in modern databases as agentic application demand accelerates. Developers can now build collaborative agentic apps on a single Postgres standard, run Postgres inside agent sandboxes, and keep teams of agents in sync with centralized governance.