Unleashing Business Intelligence in the Era of Generative AI

ThoughtSpot and Mode have entered into a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Mode. The visionary AI-powered analytics platform and the modern business intelligence platform loved by data teams are joining forces to define the next generation of collaborative BI.

In an era defined by data, ThoughtSpot and Mode have stood as separate vanguards, each with a unique and successful approach to helping people find answers and make better decisions. Both ThoughtSpot and Mode have approached this challenge from opposite ends of the spectrum. Mode gives data teams and their partners powerful tools for collaborating on data science and analytics. ThoughtSpot enables anyone, including non-technical business users, to ask and answer data questions with natural language. But there was a gap. 

Today, we're closing the divide. Mode is joining forces with ThoughtSpot, merging to create a new breed of modern business intelligence (BI) platform–one that truly unites data teams and business teams. Together, we will create a suite of connected, flexible data exploration tools. From SQL to search, Python to pivot tables, and visual exploration to AI-assisted answers, everyone’s analysis will be consistent, connected, and collaborative. 

Learn about ThoughtSpot + Mode!

See firsthand in our webinar how we're building a more collaborative, flexible, and accessible future of BI together with ThoughtSpot.

Watch it on-demand

The Modern Data Stack has been defined by layers of the stack like cloud data warehouses, transformation, and ingestion–but not yet BI. At this data consumption layer, the incumbents—those built before the modern data stack emerged—are still the standard. We think that’s because customers expect so many deep and varied applications of these tools. For example, ask six people what they really mean by “self service” and you’ll get six different answers—and that doesn’t even cover the ways data teams access data. To become the next standard of BI, the platform needs to cover the entire spectrum of use cases, from code-first to code-free data exploration. 

Modern BI provides flexibility to its users, without sacrificing governance. And it provides returns on the deep investment that teams have been making on the lower layers of the modern data stack by providing access and analytical capabilities to everyone in an organization, in the data exploration mode they prefer. That’s why we like to say Modern BI is “multimodal.”

By bringing our products together, we can infuse AI into all of these connected methods of analysis. We see AI becoming another partner to collaborate with, helping people navigate data more effectively and learn new skills. The best organizations will have three collaborators working together—the domain expert, the data expert, and the AI assistant. And that's how, together, Mode and ThoughtSpot will turn data work into the ace up everyone's sleeve.

ThoughtSpot + Mode: consumer-grade analytics and data team power tools, accelerated by AI

ThoughtSpot’s acquisition of Mode envisions a connected suite of solutions. Here, you can see some early explorations of the entire workflow from a question to an analyst in ThoughtSpot, to an ad hoc exploration using SQL and Python with a write up in Mode, back again to an enhanced dataset to explore with AI-powered search in ThoughtSpot.

As you can see, yes, the products will become more integrated to amplify existing workflows and bring teams closer together. 

But, no, Mode isn’t going away. In fact, we will invest more heavily in it with the combined resources of both companies. We are incredibly grateful to the thousands of analysts who have used our product over the years and the leading data teams who have collaborated with us on product development. We see a path to production for so many high-impact product requests as a part of ThoughtSpot’s suite of analytical tools. 

Across the ThoughtSpot portfolio, we will enable every user to access and leverage data—the same data—via means that suit their role and preference. From AI-powered search and Liveboard creation, to powerful notebooks and code-first data modeling and exploration tools, ThoughtSpot will now offer a unified, dependable, and flexible platform to solve every company’s data needs. 

For the past few months, Mode has been exploring AI features to accelerate the analyst workflow. With ThoughtSpot’s AI expertise, this work will come to life even more quickly. We see AI as not just a way for people to accelerate their go-to workflow, but to use AI to augment and up-level their data skills.

Join our upcoming digital event on July 13th to see more. 

Or, you can get a firsthand look in person this week at Snowflake Summit (be sure to talk with some folks from our product and design team about some of the analyst-first AI features we’ve been developing) or Databricks’ Data and AI Summit.

One of the first places you’ll see the integrated suite come to life is by making Mode Datasets available in ThoughtSpot to explore using ThoughtSpot Sage, an AI-powered search experience that puts LLMs to work on your business data. 

One of the biggest challenges data teams face when maintaining BI is the backlog of requests to access data that’s not yet available in BI. This is usually because the business team is trying to understand a new element of their business that’s generating net-new data. Mode has always been the go-to tool for situations like this. Fire up the SQL IDE and start querying until you find the answers to an ad hoc (and usually time sensitive) question. We recently introduced Datasets to help data teams turn ad hoc work into reusable assets for business teams to explore and answer follow up questions on their own.

And helping business teams ask and answer data questions on their own through search has been ThoughtSpot’s vision since day 1. Earlier this year, they introduced ThoughtSpot Sage, which combines the power of LLMs like GPT and generative AI with their patented search technology, making it even easier for business people to ask questions and get answers. ThoughtSpot’s semantic data model works behind the scenes to keep the AI-generated answers accurate. 

Now with integrations into the analyst-first work done in Mode, ThoughtSpot Sage will be able to empower business users to tap into answers spanning a much broader range of content, creating an immediate distribution channel for the work only analysts and data scientists can do.

We’re thrilled to join ThoughtSpot to bring Modern BI to life for companies, around the world, of all sizes and stages. For the first time ever, a BI platform will embrace the requirements of data teams and business teams in one place. We can’t wait to build with you. 

Learn about ThoughtSpot + Mode!

See firsthand in our webinar how we're building a more collaborative, flexible, and accessible future of BI together with ThoughtSpot.

Watch it on-demand