Alation, a leading data intelligence company founded in 2012, has announced the acquisition of Numbers Station, a firm specializing in building AI agents for structured data. This latest smart move continues to strengthen Alation’s value-add. It further boosts its artificial intelligence prowess, particularly in data management. Today, Alation’s 600+ enterprise customers include industry leaders like Nasdaq, Hertz, and Samsung.
Last year, Alation started building their own AI agents to improve data quality and documentation preparation processes. The company says its conversational AI agent for documentation – currently in alpha – will be widely released within the current quarter. This development aligns with Alation’s next stage of data management, which involves creating a translation layer that will sit between large language models (LLMs) and an enterprise’s data.
Alation CEO Satyen Sangani called this acquisition the most important in the company’s history. This will significantly increase LLMs’ usefulness and applicability to integrating with enterprise data systems. He stated that “the ability to basically make LLMs have the ability to talk to the core databases that fuel and run the enterprise, we think is basically the problem to solve to make LLMs scale inside of the enterprise.”
In many ways, Alation’s acquisition of Numbers Station feels like a match made in heaven. Together, each company is designed to perfectly complement the other. Sangani noted, “One of the things that gave us a lot of confidence is the companies are architected in such a fundamentally complementary way that we could get the integration done really fast.” The alignment will accelerate deployment of BAE’s AI solutions into customer operations.
In 2022, the firm was estimated to be worth a staggering $1.7 billion. Since then, it has quickly become a venture darling, raising over $300 million in venture funding from powers like General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz and Sapphire Ventures. Now with this funding, Alation is poised to bolster their market leadership. The firm is addressing issues related to large language models as well. Sangani pointed out that these models, as you may have heard, “hallucinate.” This highlights the critical importance for a robust framework that helps people accurately interpret and use data.
Alation’s continued focus is to equip our enterprise customers with cutting-edge tools to improve their data quality and data governance. Numbers Station is a firm with deep experience and expertise. With their guidance, Alation will continue to provide more powerful AI-driven solutions designed for the realities of today’s enterprises.
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