YugabyteDB is an open-source, cloud-native database designed to simplify the data layer for mission-critical applications, addressing the challenges of handling diverse workloads and access patterns, enabling caching for low-latency access, and running real-time analytics. By offering a unified SQL and NoSQL platform, YugabyteDB provides strong correctness guarantees and high availability, allowing developers to focus on building applications instead of building out the data architecture needed for it. The database is designed to serve as the stateful complement to containers, enabling businesses and startups alike to build user-facing, real-time applications with greater agility and lower total cost.