Latest news with #Alation
TechCrunch
02-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Snowflake to acquire database startup Crunchy Data
The surge in data company acquisitions continued Monday with Snowflake's purchase of Crunchy Data. Cloud data platform Snowflake announced its intent to acquire Crunchy Data, a Postgres database partner, late this afternoon. A source familiar with the matter estimated the deal to be worth around $250 million. The terms weren't disclosed. Snowflake declined to comment on the deal's valuation. It's the latest in a string of tech giants buying data startups to bolster their underlying database offerings that power AI agents. Last week, Salesforce acquired decades-old Informatica to fortify its data management tooling for AI agents. A few weeks ago, Alation acquired Numbers Station to give its customers access to AI agents that could run on top of structured data. And earlier this month, ServiceNow acquired with AI agents in mind. Crunchy Data gives companies the tools they need to build with Postgres, an open source and object-relational database management system that is popular with developers and works well with the SQL database language. The 13-year-old company works with clients including UPS, SAS, and Moneytree, among others, in addition to public sector organizations like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The acquisition will give Snowflake the underlying tech needed to launch Snowflake Postgres, an enterprise-grade PostgreSQL database for its customers, and partners including Blue Yonder and LandingAI. This deal also further bolsters Snowflake's database offerings in the age of AI agents. This tech will be available in private preview soon. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW 'Our vision is to deliver the world's most trusted and comprehensive data and AI platform to our customers,' said Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of engineering at Snowflake, in a press release provided to TechCrunch. 'Today's announcement of our proposed acquisition of Crunchy Data represents another reason why Snowflake is the ultimate destination for all enterprise data and AI needs. We're tackling a massive $350 billion market opportunity and a real need for our customers to bring Postgres to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud.' In 2024, Snowflake launched new connectors for Snowflake customers to PostgreSQL and MySQL. Now, it is bulking up that offering. Snowflake also acquired data management company Datavolo last year.
Business Journals
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Seattle AI data tools startup Numbers Station acquired by Bay Area company
Alation CEO Satyen Sangani co-founded his Menlo Park, California-based data intelligence company in 2012. The company announced Tuesday that it acquired Seattle-based Numbers Station AI.
Hamilton Spectator
20-05-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Alation Acquires Numbers Station to Unlock a New Era of Agentic Workflows
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 20, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alation Inc. , the leader in enterprise data intelligence, today announced that it has acquired Numbers Station AI , a pioneer in building AI agents for data workflows. The combined capabilities of Alation and Numbers Station will accelerate the ability of data and engineering teams to quickly build and deploy a new class of AI-native analytics applications featuring agentic workflows that operate with enterprise-grade governance and context. Organizations are demanding more effective ways to leverage their data for insights and real-time decisions, particularly in the era of AI. Despite its promise, scaled adoption in production use cases continues to be a challenge. For organizations to achieve what is truly possible with AI, they need systems that are trustworthy and deeply integrated with diverse enterprise data ecosystems. Structured data—such as customer records, supply chain records, and financial transactions—represents an organization's most critical assets. AI agents struggle to understand and take action on that data due to incomplete semantics and data definitions, unclear governance policies, and missing context of the lineage and data quality of the underlying data sets. Without this foundation, agents risk producing inaccurate outputs and violating privacy and compliance requirements. Together, Alation and Numbers Station are uniquely positioned to close this gap. By combining Numbers Station's agents with Alation's rich metadata foundation, customers will be able to build intelligent applications that reason over structured data, understand business context, and automate real-time decision-making—all while maintaining rigorous governance and compliance standards. This will unlock a new era of agentic workflows that can deliver tangible business outcomes at enterprise scale. 'Numbers Station has proven the impact AI agents can have in the enterprise when companies are able to trust this new way of working and brings an exceptional team that shares our obsession with empowering data users,' said Satyen Sangani, co-founder and CEO of Alation. 'Together, we're laying the foundation for the next decade of enterprise data intelligence—one where humans and agents collaborate seamlessly to turn data into action.' 'From the start, our vision has been to enable anyone to be a data app builder,' said Chris Aberger, co-founder and CEO of Numbers Station. 'By joining forces with Alation, we're pairing our AI-native foundation with the most trusted enterprise data intelligence platform. This unlocks a future where agents don't just find data—they do more with it.' Numbers Station, AI & Solving The Structured Data Problem for Businesses Founded out of Stanford's PhD lab for machine learning and AI, the Numbers Station team authored the first academic paper to demonstrate how large language models could be deployed to meet the complex, domain-specific needs of enterprise data leaders. Numbers Station's agents bring automation and natural language interaction to tasks like data analysis, visualization, and end-to-end action—helping data teams build AI-native applications faster with more confidence. As part of the acquisition, the Numbers Station team will join Alation to drive continued innovation at the intersection of AI and data. All existing Numbers Station customers will be fully supported and will benefit from expanded resources and roadmap continuity under Alation's platform. To learn more about the acquisition, read the blog, ' Alation Acquires Numbers Station: Enabling AI to Understand Structured Data at Scale .' About Alation Alation is the data intelligence company. More than 600 global enterprises — including 40% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Alation to realize value from their data and AI initiatives. Customers such as Cisco, DocuSign, Nasdaq, Pfizer, and Samsung trust Alation's platform for self-service analytics , cloud transformation , data governance , and AI-ready data , fostering data-driven innovation at scale. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Alation has been recognized five times by Inc. Magazine as one of the Best Workplaces. To learn more, visit . Media Contact Ashley Womack Sr. Director, Corporate Marketing 650-504-2647
Geek Wire
20-05-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Alation acquires Numbers Station, an AI data analysis startup backed by Madrona
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Numbers Station co-founder Chris Aberger. (LinkedIn Photo) Silicon Valley data intelligence company Alation announced the acquisition of Numbers Station, an 18-person startup with roots in Seattle that helps customers use natural language to automate data analysis. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2021, Numbers Station came out of research at Stanford University on applying AI to data problems. Two years later, the company raised $17.5 million in a Series A round led by Seattle venture firm Madrona. Other backers include Norwest Venture Partners; Factory; former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson; Cloudera co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher; and Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan. 'By joining forces with Alation, we're pairing our AI-native foundation with the most trusted enterprise data intelligence platform,' Chris Aberger, co-founder and CEO of Numbers Station, said in a statement. 'This unlocks a future where agents don't just find data — they do more with it.' Numbers Station has 10 customers. Its product will be integrated into the Alation platform. Alation launched in 2012 and was valued at $1.7 billion in 2022 after raising $123 million in a Series E round. The company helps more than 600 enterprise customers with data organization and governance. It recently launched new 'agentic' tools to help companies build AI agents with their data. Aberger and a small group of employees are based in the Seattle region, working out of the Create33 space in a floor below Madrona's headquarters in downtown Seattle. Aberger co-founded the company with Ines Chami, Sen Wu, and Chris Ré.
TechCrunch
20-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Alation acquires Numbers Station to bolster its AI agent offerings
Enterprise data intelligence platform Alation acquired Numbers Station to help give its customers access to AI agents that run on top of their structured data. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Numbers Station, which builds AI-native data applications, is a Series A-stage startup that's raised more than $17 million in venture capital from firms including Norwest Venture Partners, Madrona and Factory, among others. Alation plans to integrate Numbers Station's products into its own as soon as the end of this quarter, Alation co-founder and CEO Satyen Sangani told TechCrunch. '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,' he said. Data and knowledge consumption is increasingly happening through large language models, Sangani said, but the fact that LLMs are prone to hallucinate means that enterprise haven't yet been able to meaningfully adopt AI data tools. Sangani said that his company's next stage of data management had to include a translation layer that sits between the LLMs and an enterprise's data. Numbers Station was a natural choice to provide that layer, Sangani said, because it already builds AI agents that work on structured data. The fact that Venky Ganti, a former co-founder at Alation, worked at Numbers Station for a handful of years didn't hurt, either. '[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,' Sangani said. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW Alation started to build its own AI agents last year, Sangani said, including one for data quality and one for documentation that the company expects to release this quarter. But acquiring a company like Numbers Station allows Alation to offer workflow automations faster. 'What we bring to bear is all of the metadata and all the context around the data and this massive, gnarly library of connectors and all of this enterprise knowledge,' Sangani said. 'And what they bring to bear is the ability to bring these LLMs, and take their cutting-edge technologies, and operate on that data.' Alation was founded in 2012 and currently works with more than 600 enterprise customers including Nasdaq, Hertz, and Samsung, among others. The company has raised more than $300 million in venture funding from firms including General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sapphire Ventures. The company was last valued at $1.7 billion in 2022.
