<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst: AI in plain language for ordinary, non-technical people, plus insight into how leaders lead by using AI strategically, includes dive market analysis for AI vendors and for those who are more involved in deploying AI in their company.]]></description><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!G9m2!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd96d4085-c13c-4377-9cf8-ab062310c086_256x256.png</url><title>The Digital Analyst</title><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 18:18:32 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[John Santaferraro]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[thedigitalanalyst@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[thedigitalanalyst@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[thedigitalanalyst@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[thedigitalanalyst@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[Cloudera in 2026: From the Data Fabric to the AI Control Plane]]></title><description><![CDATA[By John Santaferraro, CEO and Head Research Analyst, Ferraro Consulting]]></description><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/cloudera-in-2026-from-the-data-fabric</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/cloudera-in-2026-from-the-data-fabric</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:46:34 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span>By John Santaferraro, CEO and Head Research Analyst, Ferraro Consulting</span></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png" width="356" height="178" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:600,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:356,&quot;bytes&quot;:62640,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/i/211875517?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P729!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0f0b143-677c-46e2-8b7a-a886d838a46b_1200x600.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><p><span>Leading up to the launch of Cloudera&#8217;s EVOLVE 2026 tour which kicks off in Singapore on August 20th,  I thought it would be a good time for a Cloudera update. At the end of 2025, Cloudera was designated as a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Data Fabric Platforms; and they were recently identified as a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Data Lakehouses.</span></p><p><span>Moving into the second half of 2026, Cloudera is showing a growth mindset as they transition from a traditional data platform to an AI control plane. This transition tracks with the Ferraro Consulting POV on </span><a href="https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/the-shift-to-the-ai-fabric"><span>the shift from the data fabric to the AI fabric</span></a><span> required to address the need for universal real-time context for autonomous agents operating at machine-speed.</span></p><h2><span>Recapping the Foundation: Cloudera&#8217;s Data Fabric Baseline</span></h2><p><span>At the end of 2025, Ferraro Consulting established </span><a href="https://www.ferraroconsulting.com/blog/the-data-fabric-as-a-value-generation-engine"><span>a five-layer data fabric architectural framework</span></a><span> including Metadata Services, Data Stores, Data Services, Analytical Services, and AI Services. In a March 2026 analysis of Cloudera, we identified three core strengths that aligned Cloudera with the data fabric framework.</span></p><ol><li><p><span>Consistent, active metadata glues the Cloudera data fabric together. Cloudera uses metadata consistently across all analytics, data, data management, and data services, governing access with Trino and operating metadata services from SDX and Data Lineage AI (previously Octopai).</span></p></li><li><p><span>All of the Cloudera data fabric software is available on any platform, anywhere. Taikun consistently delivers Cloudera software on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or any data center. They simply deploy Kubernetes layers wherever the need arises.</span></p></li><li><p><span>The Cloudera platform supports all analytics and all types of data. Cloudera supports a broad range of analytics engines including data lakes, data warehouses, batch, various types of streaming data, with all potentially in an object store with Iceberg tables.</span></p></li></ol><h2><span>The Shift to the AI Fabric: From Humans to Autonomous Agents</span></h2><p><span>The traditional data fabric was designed to serve human decision-making. But in 2026, enterprise operations are shifting rapidly toward autonomous, machine-speed execution driven by agentic AI. This shift demands new requirements beyond the data fabric. Most importantly, active metadata catalogs must shift into low latency with access to both curated data sets and context which is often stored in documents or unstructured data. This gives the AI fabric the potential for delivering on the promise of universal context.</span></p><h2><span>Cloudera Poised to Lead the Charge to an AI Fabric</span></h2><p><span>During the first half of 2026, Cloudera has consistently signaled its expansion of the data fabric to include AI fabric capabilities. The four announcements may signal what is to come as their EVOLVE world tour begins.</span></p><h3><span>Taking AI From the Cloud to the Data Center and Beyond</span></h3><p><span>The rising need for sovereign data and private AI has many companies rethinking their all-in cloud strategy and the vendor lock in that comes with it. In February 2026, Cloudera made it clear that they were about the &#8220;anywhere&#8221; part of their brand promise by extending </span><a href="https://www.cloudera.com/about/news-and-blogs/press-releases/2026-02-09-cloudera-unveils-next-phase-of-ai-inferencing-and-unified-data-access-capabilities.html"><span>Cloudera AI Inference</span></a><span> to on-premises data centers. Built on NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and NIM microservices, the data center offering makes AI costs more predictable and offers the protection and risk reduction enterprise leaders want for their AI. Additionally, the company reaffirmed that Cloudera Data Visualization and Data Warehousing are available for private data centers. The new release gave users more access, control, and flexibility over their curated data sets with features for natural language explanations, plus usage and query analysis for easy administration of all analytics.</span></p><h3><span>Building a Stable Infrastructure Baseline</span></h3><p><span>Scaling AI for the enterprise requires a stable platform baseline. The April 2026 update </span><a href="https://www.cloudera.com/about/news-and-blogs/press-releases/2026-04-08-cloudera-advances-hybrid-data-platform-with-long-term-stability-elastic-scale-and-open-data-interoperability.html"><span>extended operational support until 2032</span></a><span>, eliminated manual upgrade cycles,  and automated Iceberg optimization. With open table formats becoming one of the long-term foundations of data, analytics, and AI, this combined move indicates a commitment to existing and new customers to remain constant in a sea of AI change. This enables AI teams to grow their expertise on a solid platform, speed time to market for new AI features, and focus more on the business than the technology. Customers are free to move their applications seamlessly to wherever it makes most sense for their business within the Cloudera platform. The ability to burst to the cloud makes data center deployments even more attractive for established AI teams.</span></p><h3><span>From Open Source to Open Space</span></h3><p><span>Cloudera is best known for the way it turns open source software into enterprise ready products and unifies them in a single environment. The expected response would be for Cloudera to continue to focus on open source software. However, in May 2026, the company launched the </span><a href="https://www.cloudera.com/about/news-and-blogs/press-releases/2026-05-05-cloudera-launches-workflow-data-fabric-zero-copy-connector-for-servicenow.html"><span>Cloudera Workflow Data Fabric Zero Copy Connector for ServiceNow, an intelligent</span></a><span> connector that links hybrid lakehouses directly to ServiceNow&#8217;s intelligent workflows. The connector eliminates cost and resource drain necessary to move data and maintain pipelines. In order to move from data fabric to AI fabric, it is necessary to embrace entire application and agentic ecosystems within the control plane. Cloudera continues to expand their control radius to move customers toward a more agentic future.</span></p><h3><span>Enabling Open, Multi-Engine Interoperability</span></h3><p><span>The AI Fabric demands open data sharing across diverse engines without vendor lock-in. In June 2026, Cloudera announced its </span><a href="https://www.cloudera.com/about/news-and-blogs/press-releases/2026-06-04-cloudera-adopts-apache-polaris-to-advance-open-governed-data-access-for-enterprise-ai-anywhere.html"><span>adoption of Apache Polaris</span></a><span>, an open source catalog built around the Apache Iceberg REST Catalog specification, is designed to improve interoperability across modern data ecosystems and support governed access to enterprise data for AI and analytics. Polaris helps organizations securely access and share governed data across analytics and AI engines while maintaining centralized governance and operational control. To secure this architecture, Cloudera contributed an </span><a href="https://www.cloudera.com/about/news-and-blogs/press-releases/2026-06-04-cloudera-adopts-apache-polaris-to-advance-open-governed-data-access-for-enterprise-ai-anywhere.html"><span>Apache Ranger authorizer plugin (Beta)</span></a><span> to the Polaris project. This brings centralized, enterprise-grade security policies to open catalogs, ensuring autonomous agents query a single copy of data under unified guardrails.</span></p><h2><span>Ferraro Consulting POV: What to Expect at EVOLVE 2026</span></h2><p><span>Cloudera is entering its EVOLVE tour with good momentum. They closed FY26 with spectacular financial results: over 50 percent year-over-year growth in new and expansion business, robust ARR growth, and more than 100 percent new logo growth in Q4 across all regions.</span></p><p><span>The landscape of enterprise data is shifting rapidly, moving beyond simple storage toward a future of autonomous intelligence and governed orchestration. Join me for the Singapore announcements as Cloudera unveils a new chapter in how organizations can maintain architectural sovereignty while fully unleashing the power of AI. Stay tuned for a deeper exploration of how this next evolution of the data fabric will redefine the potential of the modern enterprise.</span></p><p><span>In the meantime, Ferraro Consulting LLC has a positive outlook for the remainder of 2026 and 2027. Cloudera continues to expand the reach of their platform and increase their control plane beyond data to AI. The way they are enabling sovereign data and private AI utilizing Taikun is a hand well played. Everyday the headlines are trumpeting one more breach, one more rogue agent, or one more leaking of intellectual property into common models.</span></p><p><span>Along with the positive outlook, Ferraro recommends keeping an eye on these opportunities: Will Cloudera offer more agentic capabilities pre-built into data engineering and AI activation workflows? Will the company be able to combine SDX and Apache Polaris to deliver universal context for analytics and AI? Will the platform keep pace with the shift to the AI fabric, moving from 25% to 50% autonomy over the next 1-2 years, paving the way for 40% autonomy in AI layer autonomy.</span></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[AI Moves from the Data Center to the Physical World with Synopsys’s Prith Banerjee]]></title><description><![CDATA[Artificial intelligence has spent the last several years captivating us on digital screens, recommending what to watch, drafting emails, answering queries, and generating images.]]></description><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/ai-moves-from-the-data-center-to</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/ai-moves-from-the-data-center-to</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:21:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Artificial intelligence has spent the last several years captivating us on digital screens, recommending what to watch, drafting emails, answering queries, and generating images. But a massive shift is underway: intelligence is spilling out into the physical world, where machines must sense, reason, and act while obeying the unforgiving laws of physics.</p><p>In a recent episode of <em>Tech Transformed</em>, sponsored by <strong>EM360Tech</strong>, host I got to sit down with <strong>Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Synopsys</strong>, to unpack what happens when AI transitions from the data center to the real world.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png" width="462" height="258.28846153846155" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:814,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:462,&quot;bytes&quot;:3231697,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/i/211206505?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTb6!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F891ce53d-e44e-488e-8ad3-30cb1c45bf02_2319x1296.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="icon-noB79L"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2 icon-noB79L"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h2>The Four Phases of the AI Revolution</h2><p>AI didn&#8217;t just appear overnight; it evolved through distinct eras. During the episode, Prith laid out the clear progression that brought us to where we are today:</p><ul><li><p><strong>1. Analytics AI:</strong> The initial phase was focused on correlation and predictive algorithms, like Netflix recommendations or optimizing cell placement in chip design.</p></li><li><p><strong>2. Generative AI:</strong> The breakthrough moment came when foundational models like ChatGPT become capable of generating text, images, and videos.</p></li><li><p><strong>3. Agentic AI:</strong> The current wave unleashes autonomous AI agents to assist humans in complex workflows, working 24/7 across engineering, marketing, and legal tasks.</p></li><li><p><strong>4. Physical AI:</strong> Machines (drones, autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots) now interact dynamically with their physical environment using local AI.</p></li></ul><blockquote><p><em>&#8220;The world around us is governed by the laws of physics... Can AI learn the physics around us? That&#8217;s the world of physical AI.&#8221;</em></p><p>&#8212; <strong>Prith Banerjee</strong></p></blockquote><h2>How Physical AI Learns: Observation Over Assembly Code</h2><p>To understand the revolutionary nature of Physical AI, just look at how robotics used to work.</p><p>A decade ago, teaching a robotic arm to pick up a simple bottle required writing nearly 100,000 lines of C or assembly code to manually control every motor, joint, and sensor.</p><p>Today, Physical AI flips that script. Much like a child learning to ride a bicycle by trial, error, and watching their parents, modern robots learn by observing human motion and leveraging <strong>synthetic data</strong>. Through physics-based simulations, Synopsys is enabling robots to train across thousands of virtual hours before ever stepping into a physical factory floor.</p><h2>&#8220;Silicon to Systems&#8221;: Creating Super Engineers</h2><p>Prith talked about how systems are getting smarter and chip complexity is exploding. We&#8217;ve moved from chips with 10,000 transistors to modern AI chips housing <strong>trillions of transistors</strong> (such as Cerebras&#8217;s 2.7-trillion transistor chip).</p><p>Designing these massive multi-die, 3D systems creates immense thermal, structural, and electrical challenges. As Prith noted, companies can&#8217;t simply hire 10 million engineers to keep up with the pace of innovation.</p><p>That&#8217;s where <strong>Synopsys&#8217;s Agentic Engineering</strong> comes in:</p><ul><li><p>AI agents work alongside human engineers 24/7 on tasks like RTL design, test benches, and sign-offs.</p></li><li><p>Instead of replacing engineers, agentic workflows create <strong>&#8220;super engineers&#8221;</strong> capable of managing projects 100x more complex.</p></li><li><p>Multi-physics co-design optimizes Power, Performance, and Area (PPA) simultaneously, eliminating costly overdesign.</p></li></ul><h2>The Edge Challenge: Low Power, Safety, and Governance</h2><p>Moving AI into autonomous physical systems presents new hurdles that digital software never had to deal with:</p><ul><li><p><strong>Latency &amp; Low Power:</strong> A self-driving car can&#8217;t wait for a round-trip cloud query to decide when to brake. Inferencing must happen on the edge, requiring ultra-low-power chip designs (running on hundreds of watts instead of megawatts).</p></li><li><p><strong>Collaborative Safety (Cobots):</strong> Robots working alongside humans must be designed so they never cause physical harm.</p></li><li><p><strong>Traceability &amp; Governance:</strong> If an autonomous system makes a physical decision, organizations must be able to trace <em>why</em> it made that choice; and they must be able to stop errant actions from ever taking place. </p></li></ul><h2>A Final Note on Our Guest</h2><p>Prith Banerjee brings an incredible, rare vantage point to this conversation. From running HP Labs worldwide and serving as group CTO at industrial giants like ABB and Schneider Electric, to leading CTO efforts at ANSYS prior to its acquisition by Synopsys, his career spans every layer of hardware, software, and physical simulation.</p><p>For me, this interview was an honor. I remember my early days at HP. Prith was leading HP Labs and he was a legend. I got to shake his hand once but this is the first time I got to sit down with him and talk tech. </p><p>Whether you are a CIO, CTO, or tech enthusiast, the rise of Physical AI is going to reshape every industry from automotive to healthcare. My take: When Prith Banerjee talks, people should listen. Watch the full episode <strong><a href="https://em360tech.com/podcasts/how-physical-ai-rewiring-machines">How Physical AI Is Rewiring Machines</a>. </strong></p><p></p><p><em>Special thanks to <strong>EM360Tech</strong> for sponsoring this episode of Tech Transformed. To explore more about the future of physical AI and chip design, visit <a href="https://www.synopsys.com">Synopsys</a> or connect with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com">Prith Banerjee on LinkedIn</a>.</em></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading John Santaferraro! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Shift to the AI Fabric]]></title><description><![CDATA[Why your data fabric strategy may already be out of date]]></description><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/the-shift-to-the-ai-fabric</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/the-shift-to-the-ai-fabric</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 16:00:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<h1><span>Executive Summary</span></h1><p><span>To prepare for the continued expansion of profitable AI, Chief Data Officers (CDOs) must realize that a fundamental architectural shift is taking place: the move from the data fabric to the AI fabric. The data fabric served its purpose for human-consumed analytics, but as enterprise operations transition toward autonomous, machine-speed execution, older frameworks are reaching their breaking point. CDOs that begin to make this shift now will outpace their competitors on the journey toward the autonomous enterprise.</span></p><h1><span>From Human Consumers to Agent Consumers</span></h1><p><span>The data fabric provides unified, metadata-driven access across data engineering, governance, and analytics. However, the data fabric was built primarily to curate and govern structured data for analytics and human decision making. Autonomous agents now utilize insight from databases, documents, and text. The data fabric treated structured and unstructured data separately. However, operational AI requires the unification of data engineering and data governance for all data.</span></p><p><span>The good news is that the metadata from the data fabric builds a useful foundation for the AI fabric in three ways. One, it becomes the blueprint by which even more data engineering and analytical insight can be automated using AI. Two, it feeds the semantic layer enabling conversational AI to deliver curated insight without having to touch the data. Three, it provides the basis on which unstructured data can interact with structured data insight. The result is that in the shift to the AI fabric there will be an increase in the level of automation at the data layer, until the data layer is fully or quasi-fully automated. Ultimately, structured and unstructured data will be unified and AI enabled for constant adaptation to new business models and new AI requirements, especially for agentic AI.</span></p><h1><span>From Unified Data to Universal Realtime Context</span></h1><p><span>Achieving deep data engineering autonomy also requires solving an architectural friction point within today&#8217;s enterprise technology stack. The closest we have come to unified data engineering and unified data governance is looking at structured data engineering vendors who have purchased unstructured data engineering vendors, who are now working to unify the two into a single offering. The challenge is that the requirements for structured versus unstructured data are vastly different. When you add in the real time requirement for agentic AI, integration becomes even more difficult to merge the two.</span></p><p><span>The secret will be at the metadata layer, where a matrix of metadata is programmed to understand the intersection between structured and unstructured data. For example, hidden in C-level monthly and quarterly reports is the key to understanding causal relationships within a specific organization, and every organization is unique. When causality can be mapped and set as an overlay above the structured data, suddenly the conversational AI layer can make more strategic sense of the two sets of data combined.</span></p><p><span>For agentic AI, the necessity of real time context adds more complexity to AI control plane success. Historically, active metadata catalogs did not require low latency. General business context was enough to guide analytics. However, as we move into the agentic age where thousands of AI agents are acting on behalf of the organization, not just writing code, the demand for real time context and insight becomes even more critical. When agents run the business operations, real time business, data, and technical context are all mandatory. The need for active metadata becomes the need for real time active metadata; the need for context becomes the need for universal context.</span></p><h1><span>From AI Fabric Control Plane to Causal Intelligence</span></h1><p><span>To orchestrate this real time environment across a complex enterprise, organizations require a dedicated control plane. There are three requirements for the AI Fabric Control Plane that are accentuated in the move to agentic AI, and to address the fast approaching causal intelligence and causal AI. One, composability. The depth of integration for all components managed within the control plane must go beyond connectivity to plug and play. Two, interoperability. All aspects of each composable part must be fully interoperable with all other related composable parts. Three, adaptability. Since each composable part will be constantly changing and growing, the control plane must be AI enabled to automatically adjust for continuous interoperability.</span></p><p><span>This adaptable foundation is critical because enterprise decision making can no longer rely on simple correlation. In the business world, &#8220;correlation&#8221; is the analytical equivalent of the leader&#8217;s &#8220;best guess.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t have the accuracy necessary for leaders to continue making strategic decisions for their new world operations that now includes the familiar &#8220;people&#8221; and the growth of AI agents.</span></p><p><span>Causal intelligence is the next step in equipping leaders to make strategic decisions and to give leaders the confidence they need to guide their new armies of agents that work 24/7 and transact at the speed of a machine. While it is possible to use probabilistic AI to discover and document cause and effect within the enterprise, the control plane must support the engineering of causal maps that are confirmed by human analysis along with the support of AI agents, then hard coded into the control plane.</span></p><h1><span>From AI Governance to Algorithmic Business Assurance (ABA)</span></h1><p><span>In the Ferraro Consulting POV Paper, The AI Governance Manifesto, I laid out how both generative AI  and agentic AI inevitably break down the guardrails set up by traditional governance tools. Enterprise AI is failing its first major operational stress test. Not because the technology is too smart, but because the solutions designed to &#8220;govern&#8221; it are inadequate.</span></p><p><span>In addition, because AI agents act on behalf of people and organizations, AI governance cannot belong to an isolated compliance committee or an IT security silo. True AI governance must be a real time business discipline.</span></p><p><span> From Retrospective Paperwork to Deterministic Execution Proofs: We must stop treating model cards and compliance reports as actual safety. They are static artifacts, outdated the moment they are compiled. True assurance requires deterministic runtime testing of probabilistic actions. Tests must be automatically generated at runtime and dynamic throughout their life. If a model or an autonomous agent cannot mathematically prove it operated within explicit behavioral and regulatory boundaries during a transaction, the execution is dynamically invalidated before it can cause any harm.</span></p><p><span>To govern highly autonomous multiagent environments, we must move beyond outdated perimeter guardrails by embedding governance natively within the execution engine, infusing trust from the inside out. In addition, the AI control plane must apply continuous governance, actively monitoring execution intent and reasoning divergence. This necessitates real-time financial risk intervention, where every agentic decision is assigned an instantaneous economic liability score, allowing the system to dynamically restrict or reroute high-risk actions before they occur, effectively shifting from retrospective auditing to proactive, deterministic execution control.</span></p><p><span>The ultimate owner of the control plane must be the business unit leader carrying the P&amp;L. Policies, guardrails, and risk tolerances must be managed in pure, natural business intent language, giving nontechnical executives decision power over the algorithms and the incidents. Without business ownership, agents cannot have true accountability.</span></p><h1><span>Accelerating the AI Value Pyramid</span></h1><p>When anchored by real time metadata, hardcoded causality, and real time governance, the AI fabric with its AI Fabric Control Plane builds a pyramid of value. At the data layer, the current 25% autonomous will grow to 50% over the next 1 to 2 years <strong>[1]</strong>. Because the data becomes autonomous, the AI layer will grow at a similar pace over the next 1 to 3 years, from 10% autonomous to 40%<strong> [2]</strong>. The real value multiplier comes when the business realizes the gains from data layer and AI layer autonomy <strong>[3]</strong><span>. The ability to launch new AI enabled business models and adapt quickly to changing market conditions will be the hallmark of leaders.</span></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg" width="1024" height="1024" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1024,&quot;width&quot;:1024,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DMtr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8123d5f-4c1b-442a-9d82-cbca8eefaf6d_1024x1024.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="icon-noB79L"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2 icon-noB79L"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p><span>The way to become a truly autonomous enterprise, is to continue growing the autonomy of your data and AI layers, and moving to the AI control plane. As you do, you will outpace your competitors in the speed of AI expansion, the agility of business adaptability, the accuracy of AI enabled business operations. Ultimately, you will pave the way for the use of causal intelligence to make strategic decisions at the senior executive level.</span></p><h1><span>The Leader&#8217;s Growth Mindset</span></h1><p><span>To lead this transformation and become an AI first enterprise, the CDO needs to make two shifts: an architectural shift and a design shift.</span></p><p><span>The architectural shift focuses on an AI control plane that unifies platforms across the entire data and AI estate. Abandon old paradigms built around single platforms and opt for a metadata centric architecture designed for deep integration and disambiguation of competing definitions within your diverse platforms. For example, if your AI control plane can extract signals from your operational streams, disambiguate any conflicting definitions, and provide a rich semantic context, you may not need a data warehouse.</span></p><p><span>The design shift focuses on a more human-centric approach to AI. Business requirements are inconspicuously hidden in emails, documents, and presentations. The conversations that take place in the board room and around tables are accompanied by searchable artifacts. Your human-centric approach spans two arenas: One, search where people have communicated before to find the hidden treasure of causality. Two, promote enterprise wide use of AI and use the logs as an even better guide to what humans need to better do their jobs, from the CEO all the way out to individual contributors.</span></p><h1><span>Three Red Flags</span></h1><p><span>As CDOs execute these shifts, they must hold AI software vendors to an entirely new standard. There are three red flags. One, watch out for marketecture from vendors who craft a story of automation and agentic, then require you to build out the automations and agents in order to make use of them in data engineering, AI applications, and AI agent operations. Two, beware of AI without a brain from vendors who lack the maturity in their semantic layer to support the complexities of your enterprise context. Without the merging of technical and business metadata with dynamic, real time interactivity, your AI expansion will stall. Three, take time to calculate &#8220;automation value&#8221;, and compare vendors based on total automation value. Ask a simple question, &#8220;Tell me everything in your platform or system that is fully automated.&#8221;  Then quantify the value of every automation. Vendors who have slapped AI on top of their antique software will come out at the bottom of the list every time. Leading vendors will have a measurable roadmap of additional automations and AI agents.</span></p><p><span>CDOs have an opportunity to help your organizations move from data fabric architectures to an AI fabric control plane in preparation for the coming agent proliferation. Rather than seeing the move as purely architectural, think of it as the means by which you will guarantee a quicker return on your AI investments and safer guardrails for potential AI risks. Your initial returns will come from the speed of AI deployment, the ability to fine tune AI autonomy, and the precision at which you can operate.</span></p><p><strong><span>NOTE TO AI VENDORS:</span></strong><span> The data layer is being commoditized. Even though enterprise buyers continue to spend on efficient data engineering, the funds are shifting toward enabling the autonomous enterprise. As investments shift, so will the expectations of a measurable and growing return on AI investments. The time is ripe to make a shift toward the AI fabric. Your technology will no longer be measured by data efficiencies; you will be compared to other vendors based on your automation value and business value creation. The most important shift for your messaging will be toward business control over both risk and value creation. In this regard, the AI fabric does what the data fabric could never do.</span></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><p><strong><span>[1]</span></strong><span> Gartner forecasts that up to 60% of data and analytics leaders will automate core operational data tasks over the next 2&#8211;3 years.</span><a href="https://itbrief.com.au/story/gartner-ai-agents-set-to-automate-half-of-decisions-by-2027"><span> Gartner Data &amp; Analytics Trends</span></a></p><p><strong><span>[2]</span></strong><span> Gartner predicts that 40% of enterprise applications will embed task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026 (up from under 5% in 2025). </span><a href="https://itbrief.com.au/story/gartner-ai-agents-set-to-automate-half-of-decisions-by-2027"><span>Gartner Data &amp; Analytics Trends</span></a></p><p><strong><span>[3] </span></strong><span>S&amp;P Global and McKinsey research reports ~31% of enterprise organizations running AI agents in production workloads.</span><a href="https://paul-okhrem.com/enterprise-ai-agents-statistics-2026/"><span> Gartner &amp; McKinsey AI Agent Statistics 2026</span></a></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[THE AI GOVERNANCE MANIFESTO]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Multi-Million Risk, and How to Deliver AI Governance]]></description><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/the-ai-governance-manifesto</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/the-ai-governance-manifesto</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:30:33 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Reality Check:</span><span> </span></strong><span>Enterprise AI is failing its first major operational stress test. Not because the technology is too smart, but because the solutions designed to &#8220;govern&#8221; it are inadequate.</span></p><p><span>The AI governance market has devolved into an expensive exercise in corporate and startup theater. Organizations are spending millions on software that promises protection but requires massive development or slow human intervention to make it operational. It is time to call out the rebranded data governance platforms, the partially operational startups, and the static frameworks for what they actually are: insufficient attempts to govern AI in a fast-changing, real time, non-deterministic world.</span></p><h2><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Three Scandals of the Incumbent Market</span></h2><h3><span>1. The Rebranded Data Governance Hustle</span></h3><p><span>Yesterday they tracked SQL tables and GDPR compliance; today, they slapped an &#8220;AI&#8221; sticker on the box and now claim they can manage autonomous multi-agent systems. Tracking data inputs and outputs is data governance. AI governance is the management of emergent behavior, probabilistic risk, model drift, and execution intent. You can&#8217;t fix an algorithmic intent shift by auditing data.</span></p><h3><span>2. The Paperwork Factory</span></h3><p><span>Nations and well-meaning associations are pumping out new AI governance frameworks as fast as ChatGPT can produce new content. Legacy GRC platforms have built automated workflow systems to generate compliance documentation, model cards, and system cards. They function like cloud-based spreadsheets, relying on human-filled intake and update. They flag incidents and measure risk, but they were not built for the operational requirements of AI governance. Paperwork and process recommendations will never provide the evidence necessary to operationalize data governance.</span></p><h3><span>3. The Peripheral Illusion</span></h3><p><span>The current market relies on API proxies, AI gateways, webhooks, or boundary-level constraints. These perimeter fences are designed for deterministic software. In an ecosystem of interconnected, self-improving agents, a superficial gateway is either easily bypassed or introduces latency that kills business execution. These legacy approaches to governing software will show well in a chatbot demo, but they are inadequate when it comes to governing the intent of an army of AI agents working together on behalf of a complex business ecosystem.</span></p><h2><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The New Paradigm: Algorithmic Business Assurance (ABA)</span></h2><p><span>Because AI agents act on behalf of people and organizations, we reject the notion that AI governance belongs to an isolated compliance committee or an IT security silo. True AI governance must be a real-time business discipline. We are drawing a line in the sand between the old guard of passive tracking and the new frontier of active, mathematical assurance.</span></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png" width="1456" height="895" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/faa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:895,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:297195,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://thedigitalanalyst.substack.com/i/208229834?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vU-4!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaa5bd33-de12-4b89-866c-68cc4e90db77_1995x1227.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="icon-noB79L"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2 icon-noB79L"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h2><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Five Declarations of Absolute Assurance</span></h2><h3><span>I. From Retrospective Paperwork to Deterministic Execution Proofs</span></h3><p><span>We must stop treating model cards and compliance reports as actual safety. They are static artifacts, outdated the moment they are compiled. True assurance requires deterministic runtime testing of probabilistic actions. Tests must be automatically generated at runtime and dynamic throughout their life. They must be written to generate real evidence, not just estimates of risk. If a model or an autonomous agent cannot mathematically prove it operated within explicit behavioral and regulatory boundaries during a transaction, the execution is dynamically invalidated before it can cause any harm.</span></p><h3><span>II. Out of the Gateway, Into the Kernel</span></h3><p><span>Perimeter guardrails are a relic of old software design. To govern highly autonomous multi-agent environments, the governance plane must sit natively inside the execution engine. We advocate for kernel-level supervisor micro-agents that continuously monitor internal tool calls, enforce dynamic least-privilege constraints, and audit the multi-agent trust chains from the inside out, without influence from the agent itself.</span></p><h3><span>III. Govern the Intent, Not Just the Infrastructure</span></h3><p><span>Monitoring data drift is no longer enough. AI systems change in production not just because the inputs change, but because their internal reasoning path diverges. True AI governance must actively isolate model drift, algorithmic bias, and execution intent shift. We must govern what the system is trying to accomplish, not just the pipeline it travels through.</span></p><h3><span>IV. Real-Time Financial Risk Intervention</span></h3><p><span>A qualitative risk score or a visual heatmap means nothing to a CEO during an incident. If risk cannot speak the language of liquidity, it is useless. Every single API call or agentic decision loop must be assigned an instantaneous economic liability score using dynamic exposure modeling:</span></p><p><em><span>Algorithmic Financial Risk = Likelihood of AI Intent Shift (%) &#215; Negative Value Score &#215; Total Dollar Value at Stake</span></em></p><p><span>When an autonomous agent attempts to execute a contract, process an insurance claim, or trade an asset where the real-time financial liability triggers a threshold breach, the system dynamically restricts or reroutes that action in stride.</span></p><h3><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">V. Absolute Business Ownership</span></h3><p><span>If an AI governance console requires a computer science PhD or a data science background to interpret, it can&#8217;t function in real time. The ultimate owner of the control plane must be the business unit leader carrying the P&amp;L. Policies, guardrails, and risk tolerances must be managed in pure, natural business intent language, giving non-technical executives immediate, absolute decision power over the algorithms and the incidents. Without business ownership, agents cannot have true accountability.</span></p><h2><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Ultimatum to the Enterprise</span></h2><p><span>The era of treating AI governance as a defensive corporate box-ticking exercise is over. You cannot manage non-deterministic, fast-evolving AI systems with tools designed for static databases and point-in-time regulatory reporting.</span></p><p><span>The choice before enterprise executives is stark:</span></p><p><span>Continue deploying &#8220;governance bots&#8221; that document failures after they happen.</span></p><p><span>OR</span></p><p><span>Move to Algorithmic Business Assurance and architect systems that are mathematically incapable of violating your business intent.</span></p><div><hr></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span data-color="#cc0000" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Stop auditing your AI after it fails. Govern its execution in real time.</span></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading John Santaferraro! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p style="text-align: center;"></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What is Francois Ajenstat up to? ]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Ferraro Consulting POV on @Golden Analytics]]></description><link>https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/what-is-francois-ajenstat-up-to</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://insights.ferraroconsulting.com/p/what-is-francois-ajenstat-up-to</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Digital Analyst]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:33:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span>Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with @Francois Ajenstat, Founder and CEO of @Golden Analytics, and former CPO of @Tableau. We talked about AI-enabled business intelligence, something I have been covering since 2017. Our discussion stoked my thinking about the current business intelligence and agentic analytics market.</span></p><p><span>There are the &#8220;</span><strong><span>imposters</span></strong><span>,&#8221; old BI companies that snapped generative AI onto their products and call them agentic; the &#8220;</span><strong><span>innovators</span></strong><span>,&#8221; vendors that were smart enough to invest in AI-enablement and semantic layers all the way back in the mid-2010s; the &#8220;</span><strong><span>incoming</span></strong><span>,&#8221; more recent startups that have bold and flashy agentic AI capabilities built into their products but lack enterprise-readiness; the &#8220;</span><strong><span>inert</span></strong><span>,&#8221; who are so bogged down by legacy architecture they won&#8217;t survive the decade; and finally, the </span><strong><span>&#8220;inventors,&#8221; </span></strong><span>the AI-first companies whose very architecture was built from the ground up to support native agentic, headless, and enterprise-ready analytics.</span></p><p><span>There are several things that make Golden Analytics unique as an &#8220;inventor&#8221;:</span></p><p><span>AI First Architecture: With AI at the core of Golden Analytics, every part of the analytics flow in Golden is AI-driven, including data discovery, data preparation, automated insights, dashboard creation, descriptive narrative, storytelling, and collaboration. MCP makes Golden&#8217;s curated insights accessible and sharable.</span></p><p><span>The &#8220;Slider of Autonomy&#8221;: This is a critical shift in human-AI collaboration. Rather than having AI automatically do everything, the platform allows the human to define the level of AI intervention. Not only does this ensure that users retain control over the final analysis, it is a great bridge between traditional business intelligence and agentic analytics for users who are new to the game.</span></p><p><span>Automatic Analytic Workflow: Everyone has access to insight when the platform automatically profiles data at the point of connection, cleanses data, separates the signals from the noise, and gives users enough insight to start the conversation.</span></p><p><span>Analysis Optimizer: In the same way that databases optimize queries, Golden Analytics has a built-in optimizer that understands how people ask questions of data, routes the question through the best model, and helps users get to the answer they need more quickly.</span></p><p><span>Stories and Collaboration: Golden Analytics includes workspaces where users collaborate, and storytelling baked into the platform with a little help from analyst-grade explanations from the AI.</span></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg" width="1456" height="981" 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srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!22jZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3ce4fe-0627-4799-bee6-9c9f93cf6d4b_2400x1617.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="icon-noB79L"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image buttonBase-GK1x3M"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2 icon-noB79L"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p><span>@Ferraro Consulting POV: Francois Ajenstat has an advantage right out of the gates. He was responsible for Tableau at the height of its fame and fortune. That means he understands customers, knows how to deliver what customers want, and understands what it takes to turn users into fanatics. Where Tableau inspired a whole generation of data people, Golden Analytics has the potential to ignite a movement of analysts and agents.</span></p><p><span>I was most impressed by Francois&#8217; unique understanding of analytics users, and the way he has added a human element to platform design that takes into account what people need to transition from legacy BI to agentic analytics. Instead of forcing users to abandon their familiar territory and adopt something completely new, Golden Analytics gives people a natural pathway from legacy BI to modern autonomous analytics.</span></p><p><span>My favorite takeaway: Look at this &#8216;What&#8217;s New&#8217; page: It makes me feel like the start of an old Tableau conference, only better: https://goldenanalytics.com/product/whats-new</span></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hjPq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e7f0152-92bf-47af-8216-ff62ff7db74b_3768x1497.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hjPq!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e7f0152-92bf-47af-8216-ff62ff7db74b_3768x1497.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hjPq!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e7f0152-92bf-47af-8216-ff62ff7db74b_3768x1497.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hjPq!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e7f0152-92bf-47af-8216-ff62ff7db74b_3768x1497.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hjPq!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e7f0152-92bf-47af-8216-ff62ff7db74b_3768x1497.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img 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