What is Alation?
- Category
- Data intelligence / governance
- Headquarters
- Redwood City, CA
- Founded
- 2012
- Employees
- 600+ to 700+ reported
- Total funding
- $340M
- Valuation
- More than $1.7B
What is Alation?
Alation is an enterprise data intelligence platform that helps organizations catalog, govern, search, and trust data for analytics and AI.
Alation began with a data catalog and has expanded into a broader agentic data intelligence and knowledge layer for enterprises. Its platform covers cataloging, governance, lineage, quality, stewardship, policy workflows, and AI-ready metadata. Public company material and Built In profiles cite nearly 600 global enterprises and 40% of the Fortune 100 as customers.
The business sits in the modern data stack between warehouses, lakehouses, BI tools, governance teams, and emerging AI applications. Alation’s 2025 launch of Chat with Your Data and its acquisition of Numbers Station AI show the product direction: trusted enterprise context for AI agents and self-service analytics, not just passive metadata inventory.
What does Alation offer?
Alation offers data catalog, governance, lineage, quality, stewardship, AI agents, and data-product capabilities.
- Data Catalog· Core platform
- Data Governance· Governance
- Data Lineage· Trust
- Data Quality integrations· Trust
- Alation Chat with Your Data· AI
- Data products· Modern data stack
- Policy workflows· Governance
- Connector ecosystem· Integrations
Sources:AlationAlation platform
How does Alation make money?
Alation makes money through enterprise SaaS subscriptions and services for data catalog, governance, AI, and data-intelligence deployments.
Alation does not publish simple seat-based pricing. Enterprise contracts are shaped by data-source count, user population, deployment scope, governance modules, connectors, AI features, support level, and services. Procurement is usually led by data, analytics, governance, platform, and security teams.
Growth depends on expanding from data catalog into governance, AI readiness, data products, and cross-platform metadata. Because customers already run Snowflake, Databricks, BI, and cloud stacks, Alation’s economics improve when it becomes the central knowledge layer for multiple data domains.
Sources:AlationAlation platform
Who leads Alation?
Alation is led by co-founder and CEO Satyen Sangani with co-founder Aaron Kalb and a global enterprise-software leadership team.
- Satyen SanganiCo-founder & CEOFounder, since 2012Leads Alation’s strategy from data catalog toward agentic data intelligence.
- Aaron KalbCo-founder / Chief Data & Analytics OfficerFounder, since 2012Co-founder associated with product vision and data-culture thought leadership.
- Feng NiuCo-founderFounder, since 2012Technical co-founder in Alation’s original data-catalog creation.
- Venky GantiCo-founderFounder, since 2012Co-founder tied to early product and engineering foundation.
How do you contact Alation's leadership?
Alation publishes partnerwebrequest@alation.com, office phone numbers, and contact forms. Personal executive emails should not be assumed unless published.
partnerwebrequest@alation.com / contact form; personal format not verifiedHow much funding has Alation raised?
Alation has raised $340M, including a $110M Series D in 2021 at a $1.2B valuation and a $123M Series E in 2022 that valued the company at more than $1.7B.
Alation raised a $9M Series A in 2015, followed by additional growth rounds as the data catalog category matured. In June 2021, Alation raised a $110M Series D led by Riverwood Capital, with Snowflake Ventures and other investors participating; the round brought total funding to $217M and valued the company at $1.2B.
In November 2022, Alation raised a $123M Series E led by Thoma Bravo, with participation from Sanabil Investments and existing investors including Costanoa, Dell Technologies Capital, HPE, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and others. The company said total funding reached $340M and valuation exceeded $1.7B. No later priced round is publicly disclosed.
How did Alation get here?
Alation grew from early data catalog vendor into enterprise AI data-intelligence platform.
- 2012FoundedSatyen Sangani, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, and Venky Ganti found Alation.
- 2015Data catalog launchAlation introduces its data catalog product.
- Jun 2021$110M Series DAlation reaches $1.2B valuation.
- Sep 2022$100M ARR milestoneAlation says it surpassed $100M ARR.
- Nov 2022$123M Series EAlation reaches more than $1.7B valuation.
- May 2025Numbers Station acquisitionAlation acquires AI-agent data workflow company Numbers Station AI.
Sources:AlationAlation Series E
Who are Alation's competitors?
Alation competes with data catalog, governance, lineage, and metadata platforms across the modern data stack.
- CollibraEnterprise data governance and catalog platform with broad regulated-industry adoption.
- AtlanModern data catalog and active metadata platform with strong data-team UX.
- InformaticaLarge incumbent in data management, governance, and integration.
- Microsoft PurviewMicrosoft-native governance and catalog platform embedded in Azure and Microsoft data estates.
- DataHubOpen-source metadata platform backed by Acryl Data for technical teams.
- Select StarAutomated data discovery and lineage platform for modern warehouses.
Alation — frequently asked questions
