The 2024 CRN AI 100
Here are 15 data management and data analytics companies, part of the inaugural CRN AI 100, that are playing an outsized role in AI today.
AI needs data–lots of it–to work. Otherwise, the old adage of “garbage in, garbage out” applies. So it’s no surprise that IT companies in the data management space, including suppliers of tools for collecting, managing and preparing huge volumes of data, are very much part of the AI wave now sweeping the industry.
Also participating in the AI tsunami are many data analytics companies, both established vendors and startups, that are incorporating AI and generative AI into their software to go beyond traditional business intelligence and reporting to provide sophisticated, AI-powered search and analytics tools and natural language querying capabilities.
As part of CRN’s inaugural AI 100 list, here are 15 data management and data analytics companies that are playing an outsized role in AI today.
Alluxio
Haoyuan Li
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Deep learning AI and machine learning tasks, including natural language processing, computer vision, and training LLMs, create significant data management and I/O challenges. Alluxio offers tools based on its core data orchestration and provisioning technology to help meet the data-intensive demands of AI workloads.
Alteryx
Kevin Rubin
Interim CEO, CFO
Alteryx is focused on leveraging AI to make data analytics more productive and make analytics available to a wider audience of users. In 2023 Alteryx launched its AiDIN generative AI engine that integrates AI, generative AI, LLMs and machine learning software with the company’s flagship Alteryx Analytics Cloud Platform.
Couchbase
Matt Cain
Chair, President, CEO
Couchbase offers vector search capabilities for its Couchbase Server database and Capella cloud database service that help businesses develop generative AI adaptive applications such as chatbots, recommendation engines and semantic search. Couchbase says vector search is critical for improving response accuracy and “taming hallucinations” as AI-powered applications work with LLMs.
Databricks
Ali Ghodsi
Co-Founder, CEO
The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform has developed significant momentum as a unified platform for data analytics and AI tasks, including developing AI-powered applications that use generative AI and LLMs. In 2023 Databricks spent $1.3 billion to acquire generative AI startup Mosaic and its technology for building and training LLMs.
Dataloop
Avi Yashar
Co-Founder, CEO
Dataloop offers an AI development platform with an enterprise-grade data engine that ensures developers and the AI applications they build have access to huge volumes of high-quality, relevant data from diverse sources. The platform is particularly targeted toward vision AI applications that use unstructured data such as video, images, audio and text.
DataStax
Chet Kapoor
CEO
DataStax offers its Astra DB Database as a Service, based on the massively scalable Apache Cassandra open-source database, as a real-time data engine for responsive AI applications. DataStax was recently named an AWS Generative AI Competency Partner for its ability to help customers build generative AI applications at production scale.
Domino Data Lab
Nick Elprin
Co-Founder, CEO
Domino Data Lab provides MLOps software, including its flagship Domino Enterprise AI Platform, that data science teams and developers use to build, deploy and manage the models that power AI and predictive analytics applications. Domino Data Lab recently debuted its Domino AI Gateway to address the risks inherent in broad access to external LLMs.
DotData
Ryohei Fujimaki
Founder, CEO
DotData develops a number of AI and machine learning automation tools for data scientists including the DotData Feature Factory for reusable feature asset discovery and the DotData Ops machine learning operations management platform. Recently the company launched DotData Insight, an AI-driven insight discovery engine augmented with generative AI capabilities.
Informatica
Amit Walia
CEO
Informatica, a longtime leader in the data management and integration space, touts the “AI-powered” capabilities of its data management offerings thanks to its CLAIRE (cloud-centric, AI-backed, real-time engine) technology. In February Informatica debuted Cloud Data Access Management, an AI-backed system for automating data access policy enforcement at scale.
Kinetica
Nima Negahban
Co-Founder, CEO
Kinetica’s high-performance database enables real-time analytics and generative AI tasks using time-series and spatial data. In May the company linked its database with ChatGPT, enabling “conversational querying” by converting natural language questions into SQL. Kinetica followed that up in September with a native LLM for rapid, ad-hoc data analysis using natural language.
Qlik
Mike Capone
CEO
Qlik’s data analytics, integration and quality product portfolio helps organizations prepare and manage data for a range of AI tasks. Qlik Staige, introduced in September, offers such AI capabilities as AI-assisted script generation and AI-generated insight. In January Qlik acquired Kyndi patents and technology around natural language processing and generative AI.
SAS
Jim Goodnight
Co-Founder, CEO
SAS provides AI capabilities within its flagship Viya data, AI and analytics platform and the company’s Composite AI collection of natural language processing, computer vision and deep learning technologies for AI analytical tasks such as fraud detection and risk management. Recently introduced Software-as-a-Service products, including SAS App Factory, enable rapid AI application development.
Starburst
Justin Borgman
Co-Founder, CEO
While Starburst’s data lakehouse platform is best known for unified analytics, it’s also effective for AI and machine learning workloads that use petabyte-scale data sets—especially when that data is scattered across multiple on-premises and cloud systems. Starburst has teamed up with Dell Technologies to enable AI and machine learning workloads on Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell storage systems.
ThoughtSpot
Sudheesh Nair
CEO
ThoughtSpot touts its data analytics software as the “AI-powered analytics platform” with its AI search and natural language query capabilities. ThoughtSpot Sage provides AI-generated answers using GPT and LLM technology. ThoughtSpot acquired Mode Analytics in 2023 for $200 million in a move to bolster its generative AI analytical applications.
Weights & Biases
Lukas Biewald
Co-Founder, CEO
Weights & Biases describes its mission as providing the best tools for machine learning, helping organizations develop machine learning models, manage ML operations and streamline ML workflows. Offerings include Launch for automating ML workflows, Models for model life-cycle management, Weave for interactive ML app development, and the recently debuted Prompts for monitoring LLM performance.
