Google has one of the largest machine learning stacks in the industry, currently centering on its Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning Platform. Google spun out TensorFlow as open source years ago, but TensorFlow is still the most mature and widely cited deep learning framework. Similarly, Google spun out Kubernetes as open source years ago, but it is still the dominant container management system.

Google is one of the top sources of tools and infrastructure for developers, data scientists, and machine learning experts, but historically Google AI hasn’t been all that attractive to business analysts who lack serious data

As with many corporate-sponsored open source projects, Stargate becomes most interesting when it gets beyond its roots. DataStax open sourced Stargate “because we got tired of using different databases and different APIs depending on the work that we were trying to get done.” Billed as an “open source API framework for data,” the project aims to offer “a framework that can serve many APIs for a range of workloads.”

And yet Stargate starts with Apache Cassandra, the database upon which DataStax has built its business. For analyst Tony Baer, Stargate “could eventually turn Apache Cassandra into a multi-model database,”