Metadata Is the Missing Layer in Enterprise AI

Five years advising CDAOs at Gartner D&A. Now in the field helping enterprises actually implement AI and governance. That shift gives Austin Kronz, Head of AI & Data Strategy, Atlan, a rare lens. And this conversation was honest. We talked about the gap between what we say on stage at big events and what really happens inside companies once everyone flies home.

Here is what we unpacked:

• What surprised him most moving from analyst to operator

• The real signals coming out of this summit around AI governance, metadata, and context for AI agents

• The controlled experiments around context layers at companies like Workday and Fox, and what actually drove up to 5x improvement in AI accuracy

• Where Fortune 500 teams get stuck when they say “we need AI governance”

• The patterns he sees in companies like Cargill and PPG that succeed with context at scale

One theme kept coming up.The winners are not the ones talking the most about AI. They are the ones operationalizing context, ownership, and governance in very practical ways.

Whether you attended Gartner D&A or not, this one is worth watching.

#data #ai #gartnerda #atlan #theravitshow