2026 Trends and Predictions: The Future of Data, AI, and the Lakehouse

As data and AI continue to converge, organizations are rethinking how they manage, govern, and activate data to stay competitive in an increasingly agentic world. In this forward-looking session, Dremio Product Manager Mark Shamanexplores the trends shaping the data landscape in 2026—from the rise of agentic AI and data products to the rapid adoption of open lakehouse architectures built on Apache Iceberg. - The session will examine the forces driving transformation across industries, including: - The acceleration of AI workloads that require unified, high-quality, and well-governed data - The growing importance of semantic layers to bridge human intent and machine intelligence - The shift toward hybrid and multi-cloud strategies to balance cost, performance, and flexibility - The evolution of data governance into both a business enabler and a critical AI control layer Join this thought-provoking discussion to gain insight into where the data ecosystem is headed, the challenges that will define the next wave of innovation, and how the agentic lakehouse will power the AI-native enterprise.