Databricks Data + AI Summit 2026 | Samuel Bonamigo, Databricks & Dee Fitzgerald, Danone

Clips
More from Databricks Data + AI Summit 2026

Samuel Bonamigo

SVP & GM, EMEA

Databricks

Dee Fitzgerald

VP Data & Analytics

Danone

play_circle_outline Databricks' Massive EMEA Bets Amid Global Distributed Computing, Hyperscalers, Neoclouds and Cross‑Border Connectivity Challenges

play_circle_outline Real-Time Lakehouse Convergence: Creating Trusted Data Foundations with Governance, Metadata and Standardized Definitions

play_circle_outline Talk to My Data: Databricks Genie and Ontology as Context Engines for Conversational AI Data Access

Info
Transcript

Samuel Bonamigo, Databricks & Dee Fitzgerald, Danone

Samuel Bonamigo

SVP & GM, EMEA Databricks

Dee Fitzgerald

VP Data & Analytics Danone

In this interview from the Databricks Data + AI Summit 2026, Samuel Bonamigo, senior vice president and general manager of EMEA at Databricks, joins Dee Fitzgerald, vice president and head of data and analytics at Danone, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier about how global enterprises are building trusted data foundations to unlock AI at scale. Bonamigo underscores EMEA's strategic weight, noting that more than 2,500 attendees from the region — roughly 700 companies — traveled to San Francisco as the event's second largest delegation. He details Databricks' ... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

Is the same unification of cloud-scale and data-scale infrastructure happening in Europe, and what challenges and opportunities are you seeing in the EMEA region? add

What challenge is being addressed now in relation to the organization's data opportunity? add

How should data architecture and tooling be set up to support AI capabilities and enable users to query data in natural language (for example using Genie, the "Talk to My Data" program, and Databricks)? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Samuel Bonamigo, Databricks & Dee Fitzgerald, Danone

search

John Furrier

>> Welcome to theCUBE, everyone. Live coverage here in San Francisco for Databricks Data + AI Summit. theCUBE has been covering Databricks since its founding and inception, watched its progression from the early days of Hadoop, Spark, and then data lakes. And now we're seeing a unified architecture, a lot of news to unpack and a lot of guests to talk through. But one of the big trends that we've been following and it's really amplified here is the international component where the global distributed computing network, hyperscalers, neoclouds, and enterprises across the world are being connected. It's a data problem. It's a data opportunity. Our two next guests here are going to talk a lot about that. Samuel Bonamigo, Senior Vice President, General Manager EMEA for Databricks, and Dee Fitzgerald Chief Data at Danone. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming up. Appreciate it.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Thank you.

John Furrier

>> Got a little international, Paris. We'll be at the Ray Summit in July 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. So a lot of international focus with the current internet now because cloud scale has crossed over to be data scale. This is the number one story and it certainly is highlighted by the complexities in countries and Europe, Middle East, and Africa. These are like little networks too. So talk about the challenges and what you guys are seeing because we're seeing unification here. Is that happening in Europe?

Samuel Bonamigo

>> Look, first, John, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. Look, international is absolutely strategic for Databricks. It represents a very high percentage of the business for the company and we see a strong momentum. Today during these four days in San Francisco, we are welcoming more than 31,000 people here in San Francisco and approx 2,500 from Europe, Middle East, and Africa. That's by far the second largest delegation and it represents almost 7 to 800 companies from multiple industries. Absolutely pleased to be here, of course to learn, to discuss about the vision. And the company has decided to invest in EMEA and invest in a couple of countries. I can give you some numbers. For example, we have decided to invest $850 million in the next following years in UK. Top country for us. The same in Germany, $400 million in Germany, and a bit more than $300 million in France. Key countries for us in EMEA, key countries because we are also working with key customers and strategic customer of us. So it's a pleasure to be here with you.

John Furrier

>> Talk about the complexity because when the cloud came, you had enterprises, you had hyperscalers. Not a complex environment from a geography standpoint with connectivity. But when you add in the AI and add intelligence into business and into networks and to data centers, you're now seeing a whole nother impact. What is your view and how's the landscape look? Because it's a huge opportunity to get it right.

Samuel Bonamigo

>> So I would agree with you. Europe, by default, it's like multiple countries, multiple languages, different maturities. That's what we were talking about. But from a strategy standpoint, we are trying to stay the closest as possible to our customers. We have offices in all the countries. We have people in all the countries working closely with all of our customers. We also have engineering resources in Europe based in Amsterdam, in Berlin, and in Eastern Europe. So it's an opportunity for us to work together, share the knowledge and of course work closely with our customers. Different industries and different maturities we are listening. And we try to take advantage of all the technology in the platform, definitely.

John Furrier

>> Dee, I want to go to you because multinational and global kind of go together. Headquartered in Paris. Talk about, your company has big brands. Give some context about the scope of the company, the brands, and what you're working on.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Yeah, sure. Thanks again for having me and being here. So my company is Danone, as you mentioned, we're a multi-international company. We are about 27 billion euro annual like for like growth of over 4.5 to 5%. We are tailored in, let's say three categories or three sectors. The first is premium dairy and plant-based. So we sell products like Activia, Oikos yogurts, very, very popular here in the US. We also have specialized nutrition business, which is a key game changer for us as well. How do we help support the early life to adults life of an individual? And finally our waters category. So we have many different international brands that we sell across the world. Some are to help with just providing health and nutrition to our customers and others are a little bit more brand specific. One key brand we all should know is Evian Water. So we're in 120 plus countries and we serve over one and a half billion customers and consumers, and our mission is to bring health through food to as many people as possible. So we need to do that in a way that allows us to leverage agility and scale. And of course, data and AI are very much in the forefront of that topic. How can we deliver data analytics, AI in the context of what our consumers are dealing with, what the needs of the consumer are, but using capabilities that allow us to tailor that in a very scalable fashion.

John Furrier

>> So I want to get into the Databricks opportunity because what I heard on stage today, I saw transactional processing marrying with some of the core things they've been doing over the years. Lakehouse, okay, LTAP, that was cool. I mean, Lakebase, LTAP and Lakehouse obviously has been around. So analytical systems combined with transactions, one runs the business, one tells you what's happening, but you got the real time piece and you have these other areas that kind of put the countries together. I like that kind of the countries of data. What's your challenge that you're working on now as you look at your data opportunity? Because whether it's sovereignty or running the business with intelligence, whether that's agents or injecting intelligence, the data will be the key thing.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Yes. Yeah.

John Furrier

>> That's what you do. that's your job.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Yes. And so we've been with, at Danone, we've been a partner of Databricks for at least five years now. And I'd say with this boom of AI, it's really manifested the need for having trusting data that's available. So in a way, it's a blessing and a curse that it's just made us really pay attention to the fact that we need data foundations at scale. So at Danone, we've really been focused on identifying how to use our data and create our data and curate our data in the most trustable way. That is a big pivot and shift for our business. Our business now is responsible for defining definitions and standards of data, defining quality of data, defining access and controls of data. So it's a big change management. That's why I would say in Danone, we've been focusing, let's say in three areas, data, data foundation to its core, AI, and then people. Which people, how do they create the data? How do they use the data? How do they leverage AI? How will AI change the role that they are in today and what will that role look like five years from now? What are the skills? What do we need to equip our Danoners with in order to make the most out of our data, out of our AI and out of their business?

John Furrier

>> There's three words .

Samuel Bonamigo

>> No, but I really like what you mentioned because you talked about the three priorities and the data foundation, the Lakehouse, bringing the structured data and structured data together, trusted data. It's absolutely fundamental if you want to take advantage of AI capabilities and that's what we do together very professionally and very successfully. And then going back to what we have discussed this morning, it's also the Ontology, Genie, Genie Ontology. And I know that you have a project.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Talk to My Data.

Samuel Bonamigo

>> Talk to My Data and maybe you can say a few words about it.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Yeah, yeah.

John Furrier

>> Look, I got a co-host here. That was my next question?

Dee Fitzgerald

>> But specifically on Databricks-

John Furrier

>> Stay in your lane. No, I like it. It's all good.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> I'm in between.

John Furrier

>> All good.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> No, all good. All good. We're very passionate about it.

John Furrier

>> Yeah, yeah.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Honestly, I find data brings out a passion in people, almost like the soccer or the football World Cup that we're seeing the passion about.

John Furrier

>> I literally was going to ask the ontology question because this is what is the ... You mentioned architecture. Talk about that because you're looking at a generational shift in the business. You got to get their architecture right now.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Absolutely. I think one of the benefits of what I heard from this morning, it was really exciting, but I also was a little bit relaxed because we are already on the path of the Genie activity, the Genie capabilities, using Genie for data engineering, using it for AI engineering, using it now. It's also using it for what our consumers, the consumers of our data will be. We have a program we call it Talk to My Data, which leverages data governance, but bringing data to scale and allowing our users ... I mean, let's be real, we love dashboards, but it would be great if you could just type a question in a natural language and get the answers and the insights and follow-ups all in one. And working with Databricks, we've been able, we've just scratched the surface but we've able to get that. The potential is astronomical in terms of opportunity for productivity, but also opportunities in areas of growth for our business.

John Furrier

>> The AI infrastructure build out really highlights why ontologies are important because you can now do things better. It's a context engine. It's an adaptive context engine. So if it's that contextual layer that Databricks was saying, does it replace the need for traditional metadata and business logic? Because a lot of things that we used to do manually, we heard agents, great discussion there, getting better and better, context is the key. But does Ontology replace some of those traditional metadata-

Dee Fitzgerald

>> I will say and we'll see how we compare our answers. I'm going to say no, but it compliments. I think you still need it, and that's where I think honestly Databricks is helping create that metadata. So therefore metadata is needed to create that context to help enable. So therefore you need it. But how we do it is different. The skills and the profiles of those that did it yesterday and how we do it in the future is very different. We can use more, let's say advanced AI, to create that metadata. You still also, guiding principle we have is our humans will always remain in the loop of our decisions, even when it comes to the context and confirming the context in our metadata.

John Furrier

>> Samuel, the demo that they did, the product manager did on stage actually highlighted the snippets of authority in the metadata. To your point, yeah, there'll be some help, but it won't replace the business logic per se, but maybe it does a lot of missionary work. The toil, whatever you want to call it, grunt work. I don't know what the French word is for that.

Samuel Bonamigo

>> I feel we are also in the early days and the technology is really evolving at a high pace. So we are all learning on how to take advantage of Ontology, data visualization, opportunities like Genie, Genie One on mobile. And you mentioned also something very important and we talk a little bit about it is the people, the skills. So we do lots of work of enablement trainings because it's something new. And we also talk to business users more often with these new products and that's an opportunity also to scale, but to your project or to your data, it's not only IT's at scale. So we have to pay attention to the end users and that's the beginning and we are all kind of learning, but learning very quickly. And from my point of view, it's all about opportunities and we should be able, if we work closely together, to handle the future very well.

John Furrier

>> Dee, what's the coolest thing you're working on right now in your teams? Is it the agents? Is it the architecture? What's some of the coolest things you're working on right now?

Dee Fitzgerald

>> I think the coolest is when you bring it all together and you can have a senior leader or you can have any type of persona in the company want to know about the performance of our business or our competition and be able to ask a question, create insights. How we are doing that is also super cool. So the different types of skills that our teams need to have, the hackathons, the promptathons, the marketplace sessions we're having with all different functions of our organization from the CEO to an operator, it's just been absolutely amazing.

John Furrier

>> People are engaged-

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Very engaged....

John Furrier

>> because they can see the value.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> And that's the coolest part.

John Furrier

>> In their domains, they see the value. Samuel, final question for you is, what are you optimizing for in your mission? A lot of investment coming into EMEA and your territory. A lot of business growth, certainly international. Seeing a lot of sovereignty, which is good. It means more network data. What's your goals? What are you optimizing for?

Samuel Bonamigo

>> Look, of course we are growing and we are investing, but we pay tons of attention to key values, and humility is one of them because it's evolving at a high pace and we have to pay attention to the maturity of all the companies you are talking to because you have to manage your classic business on top you have data and AI. So we could have some gaps. So it's important to share the knowledge as best as we can. And then to work together and make sure we bring the business and IT together and create value and show the direction. And today I see lots of opportunities. And we are also doing great work, we have lots of partners here and ISVs, and it's important to have a kind of better together strategy and that's what I pay attention to on a daily basis.

John Furrier

>> And I'll point out you are very humble because what people don't know is that you very loyal to Databricks because you left New Jersey World Cup game. It's on right now. The France is playing Senegal.

Samuel Bonamigo

>> Thank you very much for having me.

John Furrier

>> So I recognize your commitment to excellence on the Databricks front.

Samuel Bonamigo

>> Thank you very much.

John Furrier

>> Dee, great to meet you.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Thank you.

John Furrier

>> Fellow East Coaster, New Jersey.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Thank you very ... Same here. Yes.

John Furrier

>> And we'll follow up and love to talk more. Thanks for sharing.

Dee Fitzgerald

>> Yeah. Thank you.

John Furrier

>> Hearing that data is going to be the key and unification, bringing it all together is the fun part, but with AI, the value is when the engagement of the users and the domains are using it, that's really the value. Of course, there's infrastructure issues around sovereignty and AI investment continues to build out. More coverage from Databricks live on the floor after this short break. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE.