The Agentic Future: How Streaming is Evolving for AI w/ Tyler Akidau
The world of data is being reset by AI, and the infrastructure needs to evolve with it. I sit down with streaming legend Tyler Akidau to discuss how the principles of stream processing are forming the foundation for the next generation of "agentic AI" systems.Tyler, who was an AI cynic until recently, explains why he's now convinced that AI agents will fundamentally change how businesses operate and what problems we need to solve to deploy them safely.Key topics we explore:From Human Analytics to Agentic Systems: How data architectures built for human analysis must be re-imagined for a world with thousands of AI agents operating at machine speed.Auditing Everything: Why managing AI requires a new level of governance where we must record all data an agent touches, not just metadata, to diagnose its complex and opaque behaviorThe End of Windowing's Dominance: Tyler reflects on the influential Dataflow paper he co-authored and explains why he now sees a table-based abstraction as a more powerful and user-friendly model than focusing on windowing.The D&D Alignment of AI: Tyler's brilliant analogy for why enterprises are struggling to adopt AI: we're trying to integrate "chaotic" agents into systems built for "lawful good" employees.A Reset for the Industry: Why the rise of AI feels like the early 2010s of streaming, where the problems are unsolved and everyone is trying to figure out the answers.
--------
41:00
--------
41:00
Freestyle Fridays - Scared Money Don't Make Money
I still see some companies acting sheepish with AI, too scared to even try it out. That's a massive mistake. Now is the time to play offense with incorporating AI into your company and reimagining what it can become.
--------
7:28
--------
7:28
From Dashboards to Agents: How Salesforce is Redefining Data Interaction w/ Irina Malkova
Are dashboards dead? For complex enterprise use cases, the answer might be yes. In this episode, I'm joined by Irina Malkova (VP Data & AI at Salesforce), to discuss her team's transformational journey from building complex dashboards to deploying AI-powered conversational agents.We dive deep into how this shift is not just a change in tooling, but a fundamental change in how users access insights and how data teams measure their impact.Join us as we cover:The Shift from Dashboards to Agents: We discuss why dashboards can create a high cognitive load and fail users in complex scenarios , and how conversational agents in the flow of work (like Slack) provide targeted, actionable insights and boost adoption.What is Product Telemetry?: Irina explains how telemetry is evolving from a simple engineering observability use case to a critical data source for AI, machine learning, and recommendation systems.Why Standard RAG Fails in the Enterprise: Irina shares why typical RAG approaches break down on dense, entity-rich corporate data (like Salesforce's help docs) where semantic similarity isn't enough, leading to the rise of Graph RAG.The New, Measurable ROI of Data: How moving from BI to agents allows data teams to precisely measure impact, track downstream actions, and finally have a concrete answer to the ROI question that was previously impossible to justify.Data Teams as Enterprise Leaders: Why data teams are uniquely positioned to lead AI transformation, as they hold the enterprise "ontology" and have experience building products under uncertainty.
--------
51:53
--------
51:53
Freestyle Fridays w/ Matt Housley - Fivetran + dbt?, Modern Data Stack Consolidation and AI Bubbles
It's all about acquisitions, acquisitions, acquisitions! Matt Housley joins me to tackle the biggest rumor in the data world this week: the potential acquisition of dbt Labs by Fivetran. This news sparks a wide-ranging discussion on the inevitable consolidation of the Modern Data Stack, a trend we predicted as the era of zero-interest-rate policy ended.We also talk about financial pressures, vendor exposure to the rise of AI, the future of data tooling, and more.
--------
42:24
--------
42:24
The Rise of the Context Company: Reshaping Data Engineering with Saket Saurabh
In this episode, I sit down with Saket Saurabh (CEO of Nexla) to discuss the fundamental shift happening in the AI landscape. The conversation is moving beyond the race to build the biggest foundational models and towards a new battleground: context. We explore what it means to be a "model company" versus a "context company" and how this changes everything for data strategy and enterprise AI. Join us as we cover:Model vs. Context Companies: The emerging divide between companies building models (like OpenAI) and those whose advantage lies in their unique data and integrations.The Limits of Current Models: Why we might be hitting an asymptote with the current transformer architecture for solving complex, reliable business processes. "Context Engineering": What this term really means, from RAG to stitching together tools, data, and memory to feed AI systems. The Resurgence of Knowledge Graphs: Why graph databases are becoming critical for providing deterministic, reliable information to probabilistic AI models, moving beyond simple vector similarity. AI's Impact on Tooling: How tools like Lovable and Cursor are changing workflows for prototyping and coding, and the risk of creating the "-10x engineer." The Future of Data Engineering: How the field is expanding as AI becomes the primary consumer of data, requiring a new focus on architecture, semantics, and managing complexity at scale.
What happens when a best-selling author and "recovering data scientist" gets a microphone? This podcast.
I'm Joe Reis, and each week I broadcast from wherever I am in the world, sharing candid thoughts on the data, tech, and AI industry.
Sometimes it's a solo rant. Other times, I'm chatting with the smartest people I know.
If you're looking for an unfiltered perspective on the state of AI, data, and tech, you've found it.
Netherlands