Latest news with #ChrisAberger
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.
