# Satyen Sangani

> Satyen Sangani is the co-founder and CEO of Alation, the company that built the modern data catalog and turned an obscure metadata problem into a $1.7B category. A former Morgan Stanley analyst and decade-long Oracle executive turned founder, he hosts the Data Radicals podcast and argues, loudly, that data is power and the point of distributing it is to give that power away.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-Founder at Alation
- **Organizations:** Alation, Oracle, Texas Pacific Group, Morgan Stanley
- **From:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** A.B., Economics, Columbia University, M.Sc., Economics for Development, University of Oxford
- **Known for:** Co-founded and scaled Alation from a 2012 idea to a unicorn valued >$1.7B, Raised approximately $340M in venture capital across multiple rounds, Built the first modern enterprise data catalog category

## Career timeline

- **1997** — Joined Morgan Stanley as an analyst after Columbia
- **1999** — Associate at private investment firm Texas Pacific Group
- **2001** — M.Sc. Economics for Development at Oxford
- **2003** — Joined Oracle, eventually running the Financial Services Warehousing and Performance Management business
- **2012** — Co-founded Alation with Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, and Venky Ganti
- **2019** — Alation crosses $100M ARR milestone
- **2021** — Alation becomes a unicorn at >$1.7B valuation
- **2022** — Alation reaches centaur status ($100M+ ARR)
- **2023** — Launches Data Radicals podcast; raises additional venture capital

## Achievements

- Co-founded and scaled Alation from a 2012 idea to a unicorn valued >$1.7B
- Raised approximately $340M in venture capital across multiple rounds
- Built the first modern enterprise data catalog category
- Crossed $100M ARR milestone, reaching centaur status
- Hosts Data Radicals, a podcast for data leaders
- Featured on DataIQ 100 list of most influential data and analytics practitioners

## Latest updates

- **2023-06** — Alation raised additional venture funding (round not specified) bringing total funding to roughly $315-340M.
- **2024-01** — Continued public commentary on the role of data catalogs in the age of generative AI and LLM grounding.

## Links

- Website: https://alation.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/satyx

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/satyen-sangani
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-30