Couchbase unveils Capella AI Services for streamlining AI

Couchbase has announced the introduction of Capella AI Services to its database-as-a-service platform to address data challenges in AI development and deployment.

These new AI services aim to support organisations in prototyping, building, testing, and deploying AI agents efficiently. The services offer features including model hosting, automated vectorisation, unstructured data preprocessing, and an AI agent catalogue. They align closely with developers' needs for more personalised and contextual agent experiences while tackling issues of latency and operational costs.

Matt McDonough, Senior Vice President of Product and Partners at Couchbase, commented, "As AI dramatically transforms applications, organisations need secure ways to integrate it and must handle the surge of data across diverse formats to build and deploy agentic applications with confidence. Couchbase is making this possible by providing a comprehensive AI-powered developer data platform that streamlines retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, ensures fast and secure model interactions and enables agent reuse during development and production."

"We're helping customers through the broad spectrum of AI advances, from simple vector search to RAG chatbots and sophisticated agentic AI apps, and enabling them to deliver more personalised and contextual experiences while reducing development complexity and operational costs."

Carl Olofson, Research Vice President at IDC, also addressed the increasing data management challenges enterprises face as AI agents become more prevalent. He stated, "The proliferation of AI agents is fundamentally transforming both development and operations, creating new data management challenges for enterprises. Organisations must now preserve and analyse vast amounts of data from agent-LLM interactions, including prompts, responses and validation artefacts – all critical for ensuring ongoing accuracy and reliability."

"They also face the complexity of maintaining agent guardrails against evolving LLM behaviours. Couchbase Capella and its new AI Services are designed to strategically address these challenges and provide enterprises the scalable architecture and flexibility needed to handle complex RAG workflows and manage huge volumes of new types of AI data."

To help developers, Capella AI Services includes several key functionalities. Model Services offer managed endpoints and added features like prompt caching and keyword filtering. Unstructured Data Services transform unstructured documents into queryable formats. Vectorisation Services aid in building RAG pipelines by automating the vectorisation and indexing of data. The AI Agent Catalog Services streamline application development with a repository for tools and metadata, while Capella AI Functions enhance productivity by integrating AI-driven data analysis directly into workflows.

Capella AI Services are intended to provide a unified platform to handle complex AI workflows, enabling quicker market delivery of agentic AI applications while maintaining safety and control over enterprise data. Developers can use existing skills, tools, and the SQL++ query language through familiar programming environments, ensuring they maintain control over data security and application performance without encountering high costs.

Emphasising the strategic intent behind these services, McDonough recounted, "Developer productivity and empowering the development of AI-driven applications anywhere are at the heart of our strategy. By providing a unified platform that supports development from prototype to production, we're enabling organisations to build and deploy AI applications from cloud to edge that are sophisticated, trustworthy and cost-effective."