Apache DataFusion is a top-level Apache Software Foundation project that has achieved best-in-class performance for querying Parquet files in the ClickBench benchmark and had a research paper accepted for SIGMOD. It provides a powerful, embeddable, and scalable solution out of the box, leveling the playing field for startups and open source projects to compete with established data platforms. DataFusion is used by various projects such as Pydantic Logfire, InfluxDB, OpenObserve, LanceDB, SpiceAI, Cube, and Arroyo to power real-time observability, AI-driven applications, vector databases, semantic layers, stream processing frameworks, and more. The project's versatility, interoperability with Apache Arrow and Parquet, Rust programming language, extensibility, and scalability make it an attractive choice for developers building data-intensive applications. With its growing open source community, strong performance benchmarks, and continued innovation, DataFusion is positioned to become the foundation of the next generation of data-driven applications.