Name

Alation

Legal name

Alation, Inc.

Website

https://alation.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

501–1,000 employees

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Data Intelligence Platform

NAICS

Custom Computer Programming Services (541511)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)

akta.pro primary industry

Augmented Analytics & AI-Assisted BI (NLQ/NLG, Insights) (HDAEAMAD)

akta.pro secondary industries

iPaaS / Cloud Data Integration (HDAEACAD), Data Platform (Unified Data & Analytics) Suites (HDAEABAD)

Keywords

• Data intelligence platform
• Data catalog software
• Data governance solutions
• Metadata management
• AI governance platform

Headquarters

HQ city

Redwood City

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices4 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Enterprise Subscription Licensing: B2B SaaS subscription platform licensed to large enterprises; third-party estimates cite first-year costs in the $448,000–$850,000 range with 5–6 month deployments, indicating tiered annual subscription contracts rather than per-seat pricing.
2. Expert Services: Adjacent services offering (Alation Expert Services) supporting deployment, onboarding, and adoption — a professional services revenue layer on top of platform subscriptions.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion4 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

Alation sells the Alation Agentic Data Intelligence Platform, a cloud-native enterprise software platform that combines data cataloging, data governance, data lineage, data quality, AI governance, and a data products marketplace with agentic AI capabilities (Agent Studio, Documentation Agent, Data Quality Agent, Data Products Builder Agent, CDE Manager). The platform is licensed to large enterprises on annual subscriptions, accessed via 120+ native connectors, and supported by Alation Expert Services for deployment and adoption.

Product overview

Alation offers a single unified platform (the Alation Agentic Data Intelligence Platform) that serves as a data knowledge layer combining cataloging, governance, lineage, data quality, AI governance, and data product delivery through a suite of agentic AI modules. The platform comprises core capabilities such as Data Catalog, Data Governance, AI Governance, Data Lineage, Data Products Marketplace, Chat with Your Data, and Search & Discovery, supported by Alation Agents including the Documentation Agent, Data Quality Agent, Data Products Builder Agent, and the customizable Agent Studio. Platform services include Active Metadata Graph, Workflow Automation, ALLIE AI, Open Connectors Framework, Open Data Quality Framework, and Alation Curation Automation, with APIs and the AI Agent SDK enabling extensibility.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Alation Agentic Data Intelligence Platform The overarching cloud-native enterprise platform combining data cataloging, data governance, data lineage, data quality, AI governance, and a data products marketplace with agentic workflows for trusted AI and data initiatives. Sold to large enterprises on annual subscriptions.
• Alation Agent Studio No-code and SDK-based tool for building governed AI agents with out-of-the-box templates, vendor-neutral design, and deployment via MCP or REST APIs to 100+ data systems; supports built-in evaluations (Q&A pairs, custom judges) achieving greater than 90% accuracy.
• Documentation Agent AI agent that automates data asset documentation by translating technical metadata into business terms, auto-titling assets, and generating suggested descriptions; expands technical abbreviations into natural language and links readme files to data assets.
• Data Quality Agent AI-powered agent that uses metadata and the Behavioral Analysis Engine (BAE) to learn query patterns, identify critical data elements, auto-suggest tailored quality rules, and proactively resolve data quality issues in context within the data catalog.
• Data Products Builder Agent No-code AI agent that recommends data products for business questions, auto-identifies relevant assets, generates documentation with active metadata, and packages governed interoperable data products based on the Open Data Products Specification (ODPS).
• Alation Data Catalog AI-powered data catalog providing instant access to 120+ data sources, enabling users to find, understand, and trust data with descriptions, lineage, policies, and quality signals.
• Alation Data Governance People-first data governance solution that centralizes policies, automates stewardship, and enforces access controls and approvals to safely unlock data value across the enterprise.
• Alation AI Governance System of record for AI assets providing an AI asset registry, evidence-backed model cards generated from metadata, regulation-aware approval workflows, and executive compliance dashboards covering EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, and GDPR.
• Alation Data Products Marketplace Centralized marketplace for discovering, certifying, and distributing reusable, AI-ready data products with built-in governance and access controls, enabling enterprises to operationalize data as products.
• Chat with Your Data Natural language query interface powered by metadata-aware Query Agents that writes SQL/Python against trusted data products, delivering cited answers with full transparency of data sources, joins, and business definitions; claimed 60%+ more accurate than generic AI tools.
• Data Lineage Automated end-to-end lineage visualization combining technical and business lineage with toggleable overlays for data quality, trust flags, and business metadata, enabling impact analysis and root-cause troubleshooting.
• Alation Search & Discovery AI-driven intelligent search that democratizes discovery of enterprise data assets, combining semantic AI-powered search with keyword search and behavioral ranking for personalized results.
• Alation Analytics Data maturity analytics providing scorecards, adoption tracking, ROI metrics, and a Chat with Alation Analytics natural language interface for usage insights.
• Alation CDE Manager Agentic governance solution for Critical Data Elements that translates risk and compliance language into data management standards, semantically maps CDEs across the data ecosystem, and provides audit-ready CDE health visibility from a single registry.
• Alation Curation Automation AI-agent-driven automation that eliminates metadata backlog by enriching the catalog at scale with natural-language-defined standards, offering previewable suggestions and auditability for outcome-based governance.
• Alation APIs REST APIs enabling seamless integration across data ecosystems, automating workflows and accelerating data-driven innovation for customers and partners.
• AI Agent SDK Software development kit that helps organizations build secure AI applications and agents by extending Alation's Agentic Knowledge Layer and tools to any platform via MCP or REST APIs.
• Alation Connected Sheets Product that allows business users to integrate trusted data into spreadsheets (Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel) to improve data governance and reduce errors in everyday analytics workflows.
• Semantic Model Mastering Capability within the Data Products Marketplace that centrally governs semantic models across Snowflake, Power BI, Tableau, and Databricks and syncs governed definitions back to source systems, functioning as MDM for the semantic layer.
• Alation Expert Services Adjacent services offering supporting deployment, onboarding, and adoption of the Alation platform — a professional services revenue layer sold alongside enterprise subscriptions.
• Alation Document Hubs Standalone offering that builds a common data language across teams via shared, curated documentation hubs.

Named customers21 records

Segments7 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration13 records

AI capability12 records

Feature11 records

Partnerships

Nine partnerships are on record, tiered flagship technology partner, strategic gtm partner, strategic integration partner, industry consortium, acquired company and flagship strategic partnership.

• Snowflakeflagship technology partnerTechnology or IntegrationDeep technology integration with native connectors and joint marketing; Alation is a launch partner alongside Snowflake for the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) launched in September 2025. Semantic Model Mastering syncs governed definitions back to Snowflake.
• Databricksflagship technology partnerTechnology or IntegrationNative Databricks Unity Catalog integration with end-to-end automation, governance, and data intelligence; Semantic Model Mastering capability is jointly marketed with Databricks.
• Salesforcestrategic gtm partnerGTM or Marketing PartnerPartnered with Salesforce on data governance for Data Cloud; Salesforce is also a co-founding member of the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) consortium alongside Snowflake, dbt, BlackRock, and Alation.
• Reltiostrategic integration partnerTechnology or IntegrationAnnounced an integration in March 2025 to power agentic AI with timely, trusted data and simplify data governance via the Alation-Reltio connector.
• dbt Labsstrategic integration partnerTechnology or IntegrationAlation is positioned as a centralized trust layer across orchestration tools including dbt; Nikhil Kothari (head of technology partnerships at dbt Labs) has highlighted the value of Alation's catalog integration. Co-founding member of OSI consortium.
• Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) Consortiumindustry consortiumStrategic or Co-development PartnerAlation is a launch partner of the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) — an industry-wide specification to standardize semantic metadata exchange across analytics, AI, and BI platforms — alongside Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt, and BlackRock. The consortium held its first working group meeting on October 17, 2025.
• Numbers Station AIacquired companyStrategic or Co-development PartnerAcquired by Alation on May 20, 2025; brings Numbers Station's AI-native agent technology (originating from Stanford's machine learning research) to Alation's enterprise data intelligence platform for AI-native analytics applications with agentic workflows and governance.
• Lyngo Analyticsacquired companyStrategic or Co-development PartnerAcquired by Alation in October 2021 to enhance the data intelligence platform with AI capabilities, improving data asset discovery and natural-language query capabilities for nontechnical users.
• Daimler Truck North Americaflagship strategic partnershipGTM or Marketing PartnerAlation partnered with Daimler Truck North America to govern the automaker's global manufacturing and supply chain data through AI agents, supporting agentic AI workflow deployment at enterprise scale.

Scale indicators12 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Informatica: Informatica is a long-established data integration and governance suite (including its CLAIRE-powered catalog and data quality modules) that competes with Alation at the enterprise tier and is now a privately held company under Permira/Salesforce Ventures ownership.
• Microsoft Purview: Microsoft Purview is the hyperscaler-scale unified data governance service bundled with the Microsoft Fabric and Azure data stack, directly competing with Alation's catalog, lineage, and governance capabilities inside Microsoft-centric enterprises.
• Talend (Qlik): Talend, now part of Qlik, offers data integration, quality, and governance capabilities that overlap with Alation's data quality and catalog modules, especially in hybrid and on-premises deployments.
• AWS Glue Data Catalog: AWS Glue Data Catalog is the default metadata store for AWS analytics services and increasingly extends into governance, positioning AWS as both a cloud infrastructure partner and a bundled incumbent competitor to Alation.
• IBM Data Governance (watsonx.data / InfoSphere): IBM's data governance and catalog portfolio, including watsonx.data and InfoSphere, addresses similar enterprise data intelligence needs as Alation, particularly in large, regulated IBM accounts with hybrid and on-premises estates.
• Google Cloud Data Catalog / Dataplex: Google Cloud's Dataplex (which evolved from Cloud Data Catalog) provides metadata management and governance natively within the Google Cloud ecosystem, representing both a partner and a competitive threat to Alation in GCP shops.

Emerging players

• DataHub (LinkedIn open source): DataHub is the leading open-source metadata platform originated at LinkedIn; it competes with Alation in discovery and lineage for technically sophisticated, cloud-native data teams and represents a lower-cost alternative path for enterprises.
• dbt Labs: dbt Labs is both an Alation partner (centralized trust layer across dbt) and an emerging competitor as it expands into semantic-layer governance with the dbt Semantic Layer, potentially encroaching on Alation's metadata and governance territory.
• Atlan: Atlan is a modern, AI-native data catalog and governance platform positioned as a more agile alternative to Alation and Collibra, with strong traction among cloud-native and mid-market data teams and a frequently cited lower TCO.

Direct peers

• Collibra: Collibra is Alation's closest direct competitor, offering a data intelligence platform that combines data catalog, governance, lineage, and privacy — directly overlapping with Alation's core capabilities and targeting similar Fortune 500 buyers.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/Alation
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@Alation
• Facebookfacebook.com/alationinc
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/alation

Compliance7 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles9 records

Subsidiaries2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds7 records

Investors25 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A3 records

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Alation