As volatile as capital markets feel today, one thing remains certain: CockroachDB keeps critical systems running — no matter what.
On April 10, Cockroach Labs hosted “Unlocking Capital Markets Innovation,” a dynamic, in-person gathering that brought together financial services technology leaders, data professionals, and innovators. The agenda featured thought leadership panels, a live GenAI demo, insightful presentations — and a high-energy fireside chat that kept the crowd engaged until the very end.
Set against the elegant backdrop of 10 Grand Central in New York City, the event featured perspectives from executives at AWS, Accenture, Red Hat, and Cockroach Labs co-founders Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis.
Session topics included:
Capital Markets Modernization
Patterns for Innovation and Resilience
How to Leverage CockroachDB for Scalable, Secure, Always-On Systems
Fireside Focus: GenAI, Resilience & Real-World Readiness
One of the day’s highlights was a fireside chat exploring the surge in generative AI across financial services — and the infrastructure demands it creates. CockroachDB’s native vector search capability sparked discussion on powering AI workloads at scale, without sacrificing reliability.
“Vector databases will need to add everything we’ve spent 10 years building into CockroachDB.” — Peter Mattis, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, and Co-Founder, Cockroach Labs
Another key theme: Operational resilience is overtaking traditional disaster recovery as a regulatory and strategic priority. Always-on infrastructure isn’t aspirational anymore — it’s expected.
“DR is not dead... but clearly operational resiliency is in ascendancy. You just want your system to be self-healing.” — Peter Mattis
The conversation also highlighted how distributed SQL — once considered bleeding-edge — is now essential to capital markets modernization. From zero-downtime architecture to global scalability, the database layer is now a lever for transformation.
“Distributed SQL is a much more recognized technology. Luckily that niche is extremely important — mission-critical use cases.”
— Spencer Kimball, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Cockroach Labs
(l-r) Peter Mattis, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, and Co-Founder, Cockroach Labs and Spencer Kimball, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Cockroach Labs
The Takeaway: Resilience is the New Requirement
Thank you to all who attended — especially everyone who joined our lively Social Hour to cap off the afternoon.
As FSIs ramp up digital transformation and cloud adoption, resilient cloud-native infrastructure is no longer optional. CockroachDB on AWS is helping financial institutions modernize with confidence — delivering seamless scalability, built-in availability, and consistent data integrity across regions.
Couldn’t attend in person? No worries, you can still follow up! Visit here to learn more about how Cockroach Labs is helping financial services modernize their data infrastructure.
