Executives are betting on agentic AI to drive growth, yet many enterprises still struggle to move from pilot to production. The difficult part has never been about the models, it is about building trust in underlying data assets, human-AI workflows, and outcome accountability. At Data Summit 2026, on May 6 - 7 in Boston, with pre-conference workshops on May 5, Cal Al-Dhubaib, principal technologist at Rubrik, will dive into Trust Engineering—the emerging discipline needed to consistently scale AI beyond pilots—during his keynote speech.
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AI is capturing the market in the startup space in 2026, with Crunchbase reporting that AI landed 80% of venture dollars. That means $242 billion went to AI startups and four of the five largest venture capital rounds in history closed in Q1 of 2026. Startups continue to emerge that bring fresh approaches to accelerating digital transformation, expanding what's possible with AI and analytics, breaking down silos, enhancing security, improving data observability, introducing new types of databases, maintaining data at the edge, advancing Web3, and more. Here are 30 startups DBTA thinks are worth watching in 2026.
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It's time to vote for the annual Database Trends and Applications Readers' Choice Awards, a competition in which the winning information management solutions, products, and services are selected by you, the readers. The voting period will be open through May 22.
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Data has become the most valuable resource for modern enterprises. However, the people tasked with managing this valuable resource have one foot out the door. According to the recent State of Database report by SolarWinds, more than 1 in 3 database administrators (DBAs) are considering leaving their role due to burnout. This statistic points to consequences that affect multiple core business functions. Moreover, as a database expert for more than 3 decades, I fear these consequences can create a cascading effect that could limit future innovation, shrink the DBA workforce, and reduce operational resilience.
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