In 2024, Apache Cassandra experienced significant growth and evolution, with over 90,000 new lines of code added by the community and more than 70 active contributors driving progress. The introduction of Storage Attached Indexes (SAI) in Cassandra 5.0 improved query flexibility and enabled complex applications to be built on top of the database. Vector search capabilities made their debut in Cassandra 5, positioning the project perfectly for AI and ML applications. A unified compaction strategy was also introduced, adapting automatically to workload demands and providing intelligent optimization. The project's security features, including dynamic data masking, were further enhanced. User surveys showed that 85% of users are either in the cloud or moving towards it, indicating Cassandra's architectural decisions were correct from the start. The growth of AI use cases is projected to be 350% next year, with over 50% of respondents already running generative AI in production. The enthusiasm for Cassandra 5.0 was evident, with 62% of users planning to upgrade within the next year. Overall, the momentum for Cassandra continues to build, with the database adapting to new workloads while staying true to its roots of scalability and reliability.