Alation Acquires Numbers Station to Enhance AI Agent Capabilities

Alation, an enterprise data intelligence platform, has acquired Numbers Station, an AI-native data application builder. The acquisition aims to enhance Alation’s AI agent offerings, providing customers with more accessible AI agents that operate on top of their structured data. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Numbers Station, a Series A-stage startup, has raised over $17 million in venture capital from firms including Norwest Venture Partners, Madrona, and Factory. Their expertise in building AI-native data applications will be integrated into Alation’s platform.

Alation plans to integrate Numbers Station’s products into its platform by the end of the current quarter. Alation co-founder and CEO Satyen Sangani stated that the complementary architecture of the two companies facilitated a quick integration.

Sangani emphasized the increasing importance of large language models (LLMs) in data and knowledge consumption. However, the tendency of LLMs to hallucinate has hindered meaningful adoption of AI data tools in enterprises. Alation aims to address this by introducing a translation layer between LLMs and enterprise data.

Numbers Station was chosen for its existing capabilities in building AI agents that work on structured data. The prior experience of Venky Ganti, a former Alation co-founder, at Numbers Station was also a factor in the acquisition.

“[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.

Alation had already begun developing its AI agents, including those for data quality and documentation, with the latter expected to be released this quarter. The acquisition of Numbers Station will accelerate the delivery of workflow automations.

Sangani noted, “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. And what they bring to bear is the ability to bring these LLMs, and take their cutting-edge technologies, and operate on that data.”

Founded in 2012, Alation serves over 600 enterprise customers, including Nasdaq, Hertz, and Samsung. The company has raised over $300 million in venture funding and was last valued at $1.7 billion in 2022.