AI Broke the
Data Stack
The data world is melting, mutating, and morphing into something entirely new. Hear from the people with the front-row seats to this transformation as they debate their wildly different predictions about what happens next.
AI broke the data stack. Now what?
In just the last year, we've watched the table-format wars escalate with Iceberg v3 and catalog battles, cloud and BI platforms promise "AI analysts", semantic layers become AI infrastructure, and mergers nobody could have predicted (Fivetran and dbt, anyone?).
The Great Data Debate 2026 is where thought leaders and CDOs debate the biggest shifts in data & AI:
Apache Iceberg & the Era of Open Data Infrastructure: Are open table formats the final default? If every cloud adopts Iceberg, what actually differentiates them? Are we actually reducing lock-in?
The Making of the AI Analyst: What does it really take to make AI analysts work? Who is accountable when AI answers the question? What's the real role of dashboards in an AI-first world?
The Semantic & Context Layer: Is context engineering the new data engineering? How do we keep meaning consistent when every tool defines metrics differently? Is the hype behind semantic layer real?
The Future of Data Teams: Which data roles evolve — and which ones disappear? How should teams reorganize around AI and context? What becomes uniquely human in an AI-native workflow?
Meet Great Data Debate Alumni
Bob Muglia
Former CEO
Tristan Handy
Founder and CEO
Benn Stancil
Co-Founder
Cindi Howson
Chief Data Strategist
Barr Moses
Co-Founder
Zhamak Dehghani
Founder & CTO
Teresa Tung
Cloud First Chief Technologist
Matt Turck
Managing Director
Bob Muglia
Former CEO
Tristan Handy
Founder and CEO
Benn Stancil
Co-Founder
Cindi Howson
Chief Data Strategist
Barr Moses
Co-Founder
Zhamak Dehghani
Founder & CTO
Teresa Tung
Cloud First Chief Technologist
Matt Turck
Managing Director
Bob Muglia
Former CEO
Tristan Handy
Founder and CEO
Benn Stancil
Co-Founder
Cindi Howson
Chief Data Strategist
Barr Moses
Co-Founder
Zhamak Dehghani
Founder & CTO
Teresa Tung
Cloud First Chief Technologist
Matt Turck
Managing Director
2026 Speakers Coming Soon
Register for Speaker Updates →Other past events from the great data debate
The State of Data Mesh
Watch the Great Data Debate to hear from data leaders who live, breathe, and weave data meshes and leave with practical insights into the world of the data mesh.
Future of the Modern Data Stack
Watch the founders of the modern data stack for an interactive discussion on the changing data ecosystem and what lies ahead.
Future of Metrics Layer and Metadata
Metrics layers have been all the rage in 2022! We decided to bring the two of the most prolific product thinkers in this space to learn about their views on all things metrics layer and metadata.
Rebundling vs Unbundling of the Data Stack
This question has been everywhere – Reddit discussions, Twitter debates, community slack groups, data newsletters.
