Just back from Data and AI Summit 2026 and I am still buzzing.
This was my best summit yet. Moscone was packed. More than 30,000 of us in one place, from over 150 countries, all there for the same reason. To build better with data and AI.
The keynotes set the tone. Ali, Matei, Arsalan and Reynold on the main stage. Satya Nadella and Greg Brockman joining in. The message was clear. The era of agents is here, and it runs on three things. Context, control and choice.
That hit home for me. I have been saying for a while that agents are only as good as the data substrate underneath them. Good data engineering is not a nice to have anymore. It is the precondition for autonomy. This summit made that real.
The product news backed it up. Lakebase is now doing 12 million database launches a day. Agent Bricks crossed 100,000 agents built and is processing more than a quadrillion tokens a year. Genie is moving from a chat box to a real coworker. And Free Edition, which I use every day, now ships Genie Code, serverless GPUs, Lakebase, Agent Bricks and Lakeflow Designer. The full toolkit, no cost. That last one matters a lot to me. Most of my POCs run on Free Edition.
The whole week felt like the platform moving in the same direction I have been writing about. Context first. Apps on top. Governance around it.
What I am most proud of though is the community.
We crossed 200,000 members. Let that sink in. 200,000 practitioners helping each other ship real work. None of this happens by accident. The community team carries it. @MandyR, @Advika, and @Sujitha Thank you. You lead with care and you make this place feel like home for every new person who walks in.
I also met many Databricks leaders this week. The hallway conversations were as valuable as the sessions. Their inputs gave me a lot to think about and a lot to build.
Being a Community Champion is a privilege I do not take lightly. My goal is simple. Help other members do their work better and grow their careers. through my community posts, through POCs, through Databricks developer community. We grow when we lift each other.
Databricks is not just keeping pace in data and AI. It is setting the direction. And we get to build on top of it together.
Already counting down to the next one. Let us make this community even more impactful.
Who else was there? Tell me your top moment.
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