I’ve been writing about the semantic layer for some time now, and regularly at that! I’ve said before that AI + SL is a match made in data, and I really believe that semantic layer adoption is necessary for any organisation that wants to use AI with their data - whether this is to make AI experiences for their customers or to democratise data access internally.
This is the basis on which Michael and I founded Delphi Labs. We could see many startups being founded to offer this democratisation by using LLMs to write SQL queries, but we believed that this method was very limited. After experimenting with a few we realised that this method really suffers from hallucination as soon as a data model is more than a handful of tables. Delphi was the first company founded to focus on using third party semantic layers, like Cube, as the governed interface for LLMs to use data.
Through experimentation with all of the main semantic layer offerings, Michael and I found Cube. We found the Cube Semantic Layer to be the very best to use with LLMs and for our AI application in Delphi. We also met some great Cube folks and formed a strong partnership with them, leading to our announcement today.
Michael and I are joining Cube full time. I will be joining as VP of AI and Michael will be working alongside me to help bring AI offerings into Cube. We will be leveraging our knowledge of both AI and data engineering to enhance Cube’s product even further.
We see huge potential in joining Cube and real affinity with our mission. If you ask any senior data stakeholder, CXO/VP/HoX, whether they want to simply ask a question and get an answer back in seconds or minutes rather than hours, days or weeks… they say yes please! Ask the same stakeholders what a semantic layer is and why they should invest in one, and they require a lot of education and persuasion of the benefits. When it’s simply the infrastructure needed for their AI data experience to work, to be safe and to be reliable - then it’s like explaining why a train needs rails.
This move will help a much larger audience access what we’ve built and learnt, more easily. They can get the benefits of the best semantic layer out there and AI in one place. Get in touch to learn more about LLM and AI built on top of Cube’s semantic layer.
Michael and I are both experts in deploying and using semantic layers in practice, having both used them since leading data teams in our practitioner careers. We are excited to help contribute to Cube’s semantic layer progression that isn’t related to AI too! Given what I’ve written about before in my blog, it’s clear to all that I’m a semantic layer fan!
There will be more specifics to come about integrations, what we’re building at Cube, timelines, etc. as we move forward.