Welcome to the latest edition of the World of DaaS Roundup.
We're back from Washington! And we're still processing it.
Two days at The White House and The Watergate Hotel. 140 of the sharpest minds in the data economy in the same room. The conversations happened, the connections were made, and honestly? It was everything we'd hoped for and then some.
We'll be talking about this one for a while. But first, the data industry didn't slow down while we were gone, and neither did this newsletter.
This week's edition is brought to you by the World of DaaS community. If you're not already a member, join us here.
🌐 A Week Later And We’re Still Not Over It.
The White House and The Watergate Hotel, Washington, D.C. | September, 2026
From a closed-door gathering at The White House to a full day at The Watergate Hotel, World of DaaS Summit 2026 brought together 140 CEOs, founders, investors, and policymakers for two days in Washington.
It was everything we worked toward and then some. After months of planning, seeing all those people finally walk into the rooms we had imagined for so long was surreal in the best way.
The photos only capture a fraction of it, but they're a good place to start.
For everyone who joined us, thank you for being part of it. And for those who couldn't make it this time, here's your window into what went down.
We'll be talking about this one for a while. 🫶🏻
🌱We’re Growing Our Team!
World of DaaS is growing, and we’re looking for the next person to help us build what comes next.
We’re looking for a Head of Operations & Community who is genuinely passionate about the data industry, understands the forces shaping the data economy, and wants to be part of building a community and platform with real impact.
This is for someone who sees where the industry is going, gets excited about bringing the right people into the room, and knows how to turn vision into action.
If that sounds like you or if you know of someone great, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to [email protected] with a little about yourself and why you think you could be part of what we’re building.
📰 News & Reads
Snowflake just beat Q2 estimates product revenue up 37% YoY, AI workloads now driving half its growth acceleration.
Third consecutive quarter of acceleration. Full-year guidance raised to $6.07B. The enterprise data platform market is accelerating, not slowing.
The US government just sided with OpenAI telling a federal judge that training AI on copyrighted content is fair use and restrictions would “thwart scientific progress.”
The DOJ filed a 20-page brief arguing that constraining AI training under copyright law would hurt American competitiveness. For anyone licensing data to AI companies the US government just picked a side.
94% of business leaders report climate-related financial losses, but 79% say they don’t have the data to inform their strategy.
The gap isn't awareness. It's data. Organizations are absorbing climate losses without the structured data infrastructure to model risk, anticipate impact, or adjust strategy. The most expensive data problem isn't the one you know about.
Making your data ready for AI agents means rebuilding your entire data architecture. Martin Fowler’s team at Thought works explains what “AI-ready” actually requires and why most enterprises aren’t there yet.
Agents treat every value as truth no instinct to pause when something looks wrong. Data contracts, freshness SLAs, context layers, and governance aren't optional for agentic AI. They're the floor.
🎙️ DaaS Podcast Spotlight
How do you prove an AI agent is who it says it is? SecureAuth CEO Geoff Mattson joins Auren Hoffman to answer the question no one in enterprise data is asking yet.
As organizations hand enterprise data access to AI agents, a new security problem emerges: the agent acting on your behalf might not actually be yours. Geoff Mattson has spent decades building identity security for the U.S. military and Fortune 500 companies. His argument: the identity problem we've been deferring for years just became unavoidable.
In this episode, they discuss:
Why an AI agent is like an Uber driver who might randomly turn into a psycho killer, and what that means for your enterprise data.
The deepfake fraudpocalypse and the simplest defense most companies aren't using.
Why your agent impersonates you instead of working for you and how to fix it.
Why the password is finally, actually dying and what replaces it in an agentic data environment.
An Unexpected Data Read For Today.
Your dog might be generating a dataset.
Smart collars can now track location, steps and barking patterns. New feeders can recognize individual pets and monitor their eating habits. Even horses are getting wearables that track heart rate and gait.
What sounds like another wave of pet tech is also something else: a new layer of behavioral data being generated by the animals we live with every day.
The interesting part isn't the gadget. It's what happens when that data becomes useful for health, insurance, veterinary care, research and everything in between.
Turns out, the data economy has four legs too. 🐾
Where Data Meets Art
What does infinity look like?
Yayoi Kusama spent decades turning repetition into an artistic language: dots, reflections, patterns and endless mirrored spaces.
This week, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam opened a major exhibition of her work, now transformed into a tribute following her death last month. At its center is one of her iconic Infinity Mirrored Rooms, where mirrors and repeating forms create the illusion of a space with no end.
It feels surprisingly close to the way we experience data: patterns repeated at scale can become something much bigger than any single element.
Sometimes, the art is in the pattern.
🔥 In Case You Missed It…
M&A Funding Roundup
Mistral raised €3B Series D led by Samsung to scale its sovereign AI research and data infrastructure globally.
CDW acquired Lovelytics for $525M to scale its enterprise data and AI services practice built on Databricks.
Palo Alto Networks acquired Console for $500M to build enterprise security for AI agents accessing corporate data systems.
Stripe plans to acquire OpenRouter for $7B+ to control the routing layer that decides which AI model handles each data query across 400+ providers.
💼 World Of DaaS Job Board
The World of DaaS job board highlights opportunities from members across our community
Vice President of Data & Systems, Aviva Aesthetics
VP, Business Analytics, Omnicom Media
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Till next time,
The World of DaaS Team.
