Being a profitable database vendor is really, really hard. You absolutely have to lock down big customers during your hype cycle or you're done for. The time to value for customers is so long, it becomes such an investment and sales cycles become really laborious (as a former DB SE in the past).
Or you focus on cost-efficient operation from very the beginning. Ironically databases are also one of the markets where it's possible to achieve profitability operating, extending, or supporting open source software. I did a talk at FOSDEM 2025 about how three specific companies (Percona, DBeaver, Altinity) achieved this. [0] It is possible because businesses depend on databases and are willing to pay real money to ensure they work properly.
[0] https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5320-buil...
Disclaimer: I run Altinity.
Yep, there will be an alternatives on Azure and AWS soon enough, if not already.