We asked dozens of data practitioners at dbt Labs’ Coalesce 25 to take our AI Reality Check survey. The goal? Understand how the people closest to data are actually approaching AI analytics.
It wasn’t a massive study, yeah? More of a fun pulse check for anyone who visited our Euno booth. But still some clear (and a few unexpected) patterns popped up.
Turns out data teams are more than ready for AI, at least in mindset. What’s slowing them down is often the lack of automated governance and budget flexibility to back it up.
The takeaway? If you’re leading data & AI initiatives, don’t wait on AI. Your people are motivated. Now’s the time to equip them with the right guardrails and workflows to make it real.
Explore the full findings below. And don’t skip the last question, probably my favorite!
Q1 Have you started using AI for your organizational data yet?
72.5% have answered yes. 27.5% said no.
Q2 On a scale of 1-5, how confident are you that your organization could successfully deploy AI today?
- 5.3%
- 21.1%
- 39.5%
- 23.7%
- 10.5%
Q3 What are the main blockers slowing down AI in your org?
- Limited budget or team bandwidth
- Lack of governance to support AI
- Missing tools or tech
- Not sure where to start
- Resistance to change
- Low trust in AI results
Q4 How motivated are you and your team to start deploying AI?
- Not a priority: 0%
- 5%
- 17.5%
- 37.5%
- Born ready: 40%
Q5 What’s your warehouse?
- Azure: 8.3%
- Databricks 11.1%
- Redshift: 13.9%
- BigQuery 22.2%
- Snowflake: 66.7%
Q6 And BI tools?
- Omni: 4.3%
- Sigma 10.6%
- Hex 12.8%
- Power BI: 14.9%
- Looker: 25.5%
- Tableau: 31.9%
Q7 Have you started using dbt?
10.5% have answered no. 89.5% responded yes!
Q8 If deploying AI came with a soundtrack, what song would it be?
- The Final Countdown: 5.3%
- Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: 21.1%
- Under Pressure: 21.1%
- Don’t Stop Believing: 52.6%
What do you think about the results? And what would your AI deployment soundtrack be?!
