Despite owning FileMaker, Apple has never included a database app with iWork. Apple has now acquired Kuzu, Inc, a firm developing fast, flexible graph databases.
Apple has had the FileMaker database since the 1980s, but by being operated by an Apple subsidiary, it's always been kept at arms' length from the consumer iWork apps of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. In comparison, Microsoft's Office includes the company's Access database.
Now as noted by the European Union's list of significant company acquisitions, Apple has bought Kuzu, Inc. The EU defines significant not by size, but by whether the aim is to "provide core platform services."
In this case, Kuzu was formed in Ontario in 2023 and at the time of acquisition had around ten employees. The company's website has been taken down and its software repository on Github was archived on October 10, 2025.
According to the company's LinkedIn profile, Kuzu was "an embedded graph database built for query speed, scalability, and easy of use."
A graph database differs from the more common relational database, such as that used by FileMaker.
With a relational database, data is held in connected tables that are set up at the start. These databases are analogous to office filing cabinets with different drawers for different types of information.
So in a relational database, looking up someone in a table of customers can link you to a table of their previous orders. Then with another table you can see who else has ordered the same items.
In comparison, a graph database is more like a mind map. With a graph database, the customer is connected to their orders, and also to any other customers.
Both approaches have their benefits, and the ones for the graph database is that it can be faster. Each further table that a relational database query has to go through affects performance.
Relational databases like FileMaker Pro are powerful can be complex to organzie
Kuzu has previously released versions of what it calls Kuzu Explorer, a browser-based database. In it, clicking on a node — one piece of data — shows all of the connections to linked data.
Why Apple bought Kuzu
Apple is required to inform the European Union of what are considered significant acquisitions. But if it has to inform the EU of details, those details are not published.
The EU's database is also only updated periodically. Based on the Github archive data and also a Twitter post from an ex-Kuzu engineer, Apple appears to have acquired the company in October 2025.
That's around the same time that it bought Prompt AI, whose technology is believed to be coming to both Apple Intelligence and HomeKit Secure Video.
As yet there is only supposition over why Apple has bought Kuzu. The fact that graph databases are substantially different to relational ones suggests that adding it to FileMaker Pro would be a substantial reworking of that app.
Given that graph databases are visually more like a mind map and so perhaps either easier to understand or just more familiar, it could be that this is intended for iWork. Conceivably it could become part of a future version of Freeform.
Graph databases are also used in social media systems, though. So Apple could be looking to enhance its existing similar systems such as Game Center communities.
Apple has a poor track record in full social networks. But it does have communities, and it does have users sharing content, such as Apple Music libraries, or jointly using SharePlay.
