REDWOOD CITY, Calif., July 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alation, Inc., the creators of the intelligence operating system, today announced that its flagship podcast, Data Radicals, is relaunching as AI Radicals for its fourth season. The rebrand marks the start of a new show built around the challenge facing every enterprise right now: how to get AI right. Hosted by Alation co-founder and CEO Satyen Sangani, AI Radicals sits at the intersection of data and AI leadership, technology strategy, and business transformation. New episodes are released biweekly and feature practitioners and executives pushing the boundaries of what data-driven organizations can do.
The first episode available today features Mark Nelson, Venture Partner at Madrona and former CEO of Tableau, who brings three decades of building enterprise infrastructure and now evaluates emerging AI and data companies in his current role. In the episode, he argues that AI has shifted the bottleneck in software from writing code to knowing what’s worth building. He notes that while “you’ve got a friend right in your pocket that can generate code,” now, taste and judgment remain the harder, costlier problem.
Data Radicals launched in 2022 to explore how organizations change the way they work with data. Since then, AI has fundamentally changed how businesses operate. Enterprises are no longer experimenting with AI on the margins; they’re running it against decisions with real regulatory, financial, and operational weight, from underwriting to claims to supply chain. The people who’ve spent their careers on governance, lineage, and data quality are suddenly holding the keys to their company’s most consequential initiative.
“Enterprises can’t afford to get AI wrong,” said Sangani. “As AI becomes embedded across every business function, success depends on more than data management—it requires an intelligent foundation that continuously connects agents, context, data, and governance to produce reliable outcomes. AIation provides that foundation, and AI Radicals is the podcast profiling the enterprises garnering measurable value from AI.”
AI Radicals will feature honest, unfiltered conversations with practitioners actually doing the work. Upcoming guests include:
- Francois Ajenstat, Founder & CEO of Golden Analytics and former Chief Product Officer at Tableau, on rebuilding analytics from first principles for the AI era.
- Erin McIntosh, VP of Global Data Operations at CNA Insurance, on why trust is the biggest barrier to enterprise AI.
- Nathalie Berdat, Data Director at the BBC, on delivering trusted data and AI inside one of the world’s most visible media organizations.
- Eugene Wu, Associate Professor at Columbia University, on the research questions shaping how trustworthy AI systems get built.
- Brian Solis and Dave Wright, co-authors of Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies.
- Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner analyst and founder of SanjMo, on where the data and AI tooling landscape is really headed.
The relaunch of AI Radicals follows the company’s introduction of AIOS™, the Alation Intelligence Operating System. AIOS unifies agents, context, data, governance, and feedback loops into a single system, so that when an agent gets something wrong, the fix routes back to whatever actually caused it — a stale definition, a data quality gap, an outdated instruction, etc. — instead of just patching the one bad answer.
The same idea runs through the podcast’s new identity: AI is only as good as the data, context, agents, and governance underneath it. This thread connects every guest this season, whether they’re building agents, governing them, or studying why they fail.
Learn more:
- New episodes of AI Radicals are available on alation.com/podcast.
- Read the blog, The Alation Podcast Is Back: Introducing AI Radicals.
- Learn more about AIOS.
About Alation
Alation is the creator of AIOS™, the open, governed, self-improving intelligence operating system for enterprises that cannot afford to get AI wrong. Having pioneered the data catalog market, Alation helps organizations establish trust in the agents, data, and context that power AI-driven decisions. The result is AI organizations can trust—enabling them to navigate regulatory complexity, maintain data fidelity, accelerate operational outcomes, and transform AI ambition into trusted business impact. Alation partners with the world’s leading organizations to leverage better data to solve their most critical challenges. To learn more, visit https://www.alation.com.
Media Contacts:
Ashley Womack
Sr. Director, Corporate Marketing
ashley.womack@alation.com
650-504-2647
