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# TiDB, One Layer at a Time: How Distributed SQL Became an Agentic AI Backbone


- **Date:** Thursday, Jul 9, 2026
- **Time:** 14:50–15:20 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 12
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100117-tidb-one-layer-at-a-time-how-distributed-sql-became-an-agentic-ai-backbone)

## Description

Every distributed database is a stack of hard problems solved in order, and the order tells a story. This talk traces how TiDB grew, layer by layer, from a single idea into a system now serving agentic AI platforms.
It began over a decade ago with one job: speak SQL, but scale beyond a single machine. That demanded a distributed storage layer that could grow writes and capacity horizontally, and then a brain to keep that storage balanced, available, and consistent as machines come and go. Three layers, three clean responsibilities: a MySQL-compatible SQL engine, a Raft-replicated key-value store, and a placement driver. That separation is why the system kept absorbing new use cases, real-time analytics, change streaming, Vector and full text search, each as a new layer rather than a rewrite.
Then the twist: none of this was designed for AI. Yet the very properties that make a good distributed database, elastic scale, strong consistency, fresh data, a clean interface, turn out to be exactly what AI agents need from their data backbone.

## Speakers

### [Daniël van Eeden](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@daniel-van-eeden)

Technical Support Engineer at PingCAP
### [Mattias Jonsson](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@mattias-jonsson)

Principal Software Engineer at TiDB


## Related talks at this congress

- [Your Distributed System Just Got a Brain. Now What?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1003-your-distributed) — Marcin Makowski
- [The Missing Layer Between Enterprise Data and AI Agents](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1328-the-missing-layer) — Jannis Eickenroth, Sebastian Klenke
- [High Quality AI Development](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1459-high-quality-ai) — David Tielke
- [3 Ways to Rebuild the Data Stack for Agents](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1100-3-ways-to-rebuild) — Jordan Tigani