In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Alyson Welch, chief revenue officer of Reltio, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik to discuss how trusted, governed data is becoming the non-negotiable foundation for deploying agentic AI in production. Welch explains that Reltio's original mission — building a real-time, cloud-native data unification platform — now sits at the center of every enterprise AI initiative. She shares news of SAP's planned acquisition of Reltio, noting the company will operate as a standalone business with an agnostic approach spanning both SAP and non-SAP environments. Welch outlines how Reltio is evolving into what it calls a "context intelligence platform," designed to give AI agents the accurate, rationalized data they need to act reliably.
The conversation also explores how compliance has moved from a back-office concern to a front-line prerequisite for agentic deployments, particularly in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences. Welch details how Reltio's agent flow platform is helping data stewards — whose responsibilities now span privacy, risk and regulatory compliance — govern data efficiently at scale. She points to CarMax as an example of a company harvesting legacy data to develop new market strategies, and underscores that enterprises operationalizing agentic workflows are driving real revenue outcomes, not just cost reduction. From a dedicated life sciences expansion to a push into new global markets, Welch outlines how Reltio is positioning itself to help enterprises convert data quality into a durable competitive advantage.
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Alyson Welch, Reltio
Alyson Welch of Reltio joins Alison Kosik of theCUBE Research and John Furrier of theCUBE Research at Google Cloud Next 2026 to discuss data unification, context intelligence, compliance and Reltio's planned acquisition by SAP. Welch explains Reltio's cloud-native data unification platform and its evolution into a context intelligence leader. They frame the shift from batch to real-time operations, describe how trusted and governed data underpins agentic artificial intelligence, and outline Reltio's interoperable multi-cloud approach and software as a service presence within Google Cloud to support enterprise decision-making.
Key takeaways highlight the centrality of trusted and governed data for successful agentic artificial intelligence deployments. Welch stresses that enterprises cannot operationalize agents without accurate and compliant data. theCUBE analysts observe that Reltio's agent flow platform, context intelligence positioning and multi-cloud SaaS model enable revenue-generating use cases. Chief data officers, partners and data stewards must prioritize stewardship, compliance and measurable business outcomes, and invest in master data management and data governance to realize business value.
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Alyson Welch, chief revenue officer of Reltio, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik to discuss how trusted, governed data is becoming the non-negotiable foundation for deploying agentic AI in production. Welch explains that Reltio's original mission — building a real-time, cloud-native data unification platform — now sits at the center of every enterprise AI initiative. She shares news of SAP's planned acquisition of Reltio, noting the company will operate as a standalone business with an agnosti...Read more
Alyson Welch
CROReltio
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Alyson Welch, chief revenue officer of Reltio, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik to discuss how trusted, governed data is becoming the non-negotiable foundation for deploying agentic AI in production. Welch explains that Reltio's original mission — building a real-time, cloud-native data unification platform — now sits at the center of every enterprise AI initiative. She shares news of SAP's planned acquisition of Reltio, noting the company will operate as a standalone business with an agnosti...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
Can you share the announcement that SAP plans to acquire Reltio for people who don't know?add
1) What is Reltio’s relationship with Google Cloud and how is Reltio positioned within the Google Cloud environment (including technical collaboration and options for customers)?
2) How do you see the industry trend toward “choose your model” playing out—especially with respect to compliance, data unification, and enterprise adoption?add
What are the common customer use cases and target industries you work with, and how do data quality, compliance, and governance affect the deployment and success of AI/agent-based solutions in regulated markets?add
What are your priorities and focus areas for the second half of the year?add
>> Welcome back to Google Cloud Next '26. We are streaming live right here in Las Vegas. I'm Alison Kosik alongside John Furrier.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.
Alison Kosik
>> And let's get into the data. Let's bring in our guest right away, just because she shares the same name as me with a Y. Alyson Welch, the chief revenue officer of Reltio. Let's talk about data. I know organizations are processing a lot of data and data is key whether their AI systems or their agents can understand the context behind that data. How important is it, especially when you think of the responsibility in having control over that data?
Alyson Welch
>> Yeah, thanks. First of all, it's great to be here and like names. The world that we live in, we make all of our decisions based on data. Companies, individuals, consumers. And it's really becoming more and more important to know that your data that you're making these decisions off of, is accurate and frankly trusted and governed. And so Reltio set out on a mission years ago when we first started to create a real time platform that could enable our customers to unify their data in a way that they could make decisions off of. And now we're entering this era, this agentic era where with AI, you really can't apply AI and get good answers without trusted data. So it's a critical part of business process and how businesses are operationalizing today with the advent of AI.
Alison Kosik
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's all about the data.
John Furrier
>> It's been great to watch Reltio and the news with SAP. Can you want to share that news for people who don't know?
Alyson Welch
>> Yeah. So for those who don't know, we're entering into an agreement with SAP. SAP plans to acquire Reltio. We're going to be a standalone business. So one of SAP's standalone companies that will continue to operate and support our customers as we do today. But we'll fuel our roadmap to focus on both non SAP data and in the enterprise and SAP data.
John Furrier
>> And that's intentional. That's an intentional positioning because of that point, right?
Alyson Welch
>> I think it's really important. I mean, the reason I believe and join Manish, our CEO to continue to help scale this business, was the agnostic approach that Reltio has taken with data. And we work with ... We're really interoperable across all enterprises and their applications.
John Furrier
>> Well, we're proud of Manish and the team. We've been following Reltio. Congrats to the team for a long time. And they were doing things before it was fashionable. Unification, real time. They kind of had all the pieces of what everyone's talking about now with agentic, that control plane, the unification layer, nailing the MDM properly, the compliance and the risk management. I mean, that was the hard work. Is there kind of like a victory lap going on now in the company? And how does that translate to the momentum?
Alyson Welch
>> Yeah, the momentum is definitely real. And I think the SAP News is a great testament to that as well as just our customers and our relationships have grown so much with critical customers over the last few years. You asked about his original vision and he set out with a mission to shift away from batch oriented workloads. He understood that the future for enterprises was going to be real time and was going to require the ability to work with data across enterprise systems, across different orchestration layers, across multi-cloud. Here we are at Google, but we operate across all of the cloud frameworks. He pushed for Reltio to be the first cloud native data unification platform. And now we're shifting into this system of context. And we are powering the first context intelligence platform, that will allow you to continue on that journey. You can't rely on analytical workloads to-
John Furrier
>> Talk about the relationship with Google Cloud and how that works with Reltio and the positioning now.
Alyson Welch
>> So our customers have a choice. They make choices on who they work with every day and we're wanting to allow them to have that choice. So for our Google Cloud customers, we're a SaaS platform within the Google environment. We work really closely with Google on our technical strategy and our architects are obviously prioritizing their roadmap and ours based on what our customers are driving. We've had a strong partnership for many years and happy to be here at Google Next this week.
John Furrier
>> It must be interesting to know that you got the keys to the kingdom. Because the compliance piece and a lot of the unification is powering the model choice narrative that's out there. Every single platform or every cloud is leaning into choose your model and building around it. And the enterprises are seeing that now too, whether it's SAP or non-data. How do you guys see that playing out as you look at the next leg of the journey?
Alyson Welch
>> In terms of which models, companies or?
John Furrier
>> The strategy and the system of record's great, you nailed that. Yeah. Now you got systems of engagement. Now you've got plethora of things with AI. We just heard the storage guys talking about, I got to get data for autonomous vehicles, robotics, hospitals. There's so much data use cases coming in and the agents are coming, right?
Alyson Welch
>> The agents are coming and they need to be able to ... And we're building agents to help govern that data, to improve efficiency for data stewards. I think one of the most demanding jobs right now in the data world is to be a steward of the data. We work with chief data officers all day long and their responsibilities have expanded. We were meeting with MasterCard the other day and the chief data officer, Andrew was sharing, he has now privacy, risk, compliance, all of these regulatory responsibilities as part of his remit. And so we're here to help ensure that he can do that efficiently with an agentic perspective.
Alison Kosik
>> How difficult is it to build that trust around data because it could also come back so wrong as well when it comes to AI?
Alyson Welch
>> We spend a lot of time on that. So our recent release, we just announced today actually conveniently as I'm sitting here with you today, is focused on even enriching that data more deeply, powering with being able to look at multiple relationships across the customer. So for instance, you're Alison, I'm Alyson, you're with an I I'm with a Y. We would sometimes look like the same customer potentially in Starbucks when we're ordering our coffee if they don't get that right. And so being able to rationalize the accuracy of data in order to service the customer where they're coming from, that hyper personalization, it's more and more important every day. So you have to have a benchmark and a baseline of trusted data in order to do that. And that's what Reltio enables for our customers.
Alison Kosik
>> Right. Love it.
John Furrier
>> How is the customer motion and going? Obviously CRO, you have the revenue targets. What's the value proposition? Who are you talking to? You mentioned CDOs, chief data officers. We see AI expanding that aperture. What are some of the sales plans, targets, and the value proposition?
Alyson Welch
>> Yeah. Wow. Big question. So I'm responsible for the end-to-end customer relationship. And my team spends every day interfacing with the customers to understand the trends and the challenges within their business around securing their data and building trusted relationships with their end customers. So in terms of common use cases, we're looking across a myriad of industries. We work with financial services insurance, that's a big market for us, and we help them with customer unification, understanding their customer, being relevant, being able to support the customer with accurate information on what they're trying to do in order to service their market. I'm meeting later today with a potential customer that's a Google and Reltio customer in the insurance category, just for that reason that they have data coming from multiple sources and they can't come to a conclusion on how to create a unique identifier for that customer. So we're set out to help them with that identity. You asked about the targets. We have a ton of momentum right now. I think what Manish set out to build is being validated with AI, and the demands on having high quality data to leverage the models in order to produce great results that you can then make decisions on. You can't make great decisions without good data.
John Furrier
>> Alison and I have had many conversations the past two days and the queue over the past, let's say half a year, the word compliance has never been more top of mind because I mean, compliance was very much part of the CDO or risk management, but it was in the weeds on the database side and it was a lot of work. You got to get it right. Without good compliance, agents don't work. That's the common theme. So compliance is a super important topic and so having that multi-cloud scalable solution seems to play well. So how's that going?
Alyson Welch
>> Yeah, it's going really well. I think what you said was, what's something interesting about the situation and the market that we're in, is that you can't leverage ... The AI boom, we're hearing about all of these experiments going on, but you can't really put those agentic into production without ensuring that you're having compliant ... If you're in a regulated market, if you're a financial institution or if you're in the healthcare market and you're dealing with drug discovery and life sciences category, you cannot put out an AI agentic layer without knowing that that data that it resolves is going to be accurate and compelling.
John Furrier
>> I mean, compliance and governance is essentially observability, business logic. And so the data we have is that all the successful folks in retail or healthcare with agents are the ones that did the work on compliance and governance. The ones that didn't are failing. The ones that did are driving revenue. So the interesting thing about the agent is that if you get it right, the revenue numbers are coming in. It's not just the cost takeout. So that's been a really great sign for this industry because everyone asks, "Where do I start?" "Well start with the revenue."
Alyson Welch
>> Well, I'm even finding companies that have been around for a long time have historic amounts of data. And those that are really interested in reinvesting in their business, they're harvesting that data in new ways and coming up with new customer strategies, market strategies. We have a great customer, CarMax, who's done that. They've really invested in looking at the legacy and looking at the current and coming up with new approaches to the market that are helping them differentiate. And it's all about the data at the end of the day.
John Furrier
>> Well, I love the SAP acquisition story and I love the fact that you got the SAP and non SAP because SAP has a huge install base, but you also have a whole other market.
Alyson Welch
>> We anticipate that to be an interesting demand problem or challenge, not problem for us. We're looking forward to it.
John Furrier
>> All right. So that's going to happen. What's on your agenda? What's your focus now for the second half of the year?
Alyson Welch
>> Sure. Oh, gosh. We have a huge investment in life sciences starting this year. So we've created a dedicated market focused on our life sciences success. That was one of our early emerging successes with our customers. So we're continuing to develop and hire in that category. Partners are incredibly important for us to be successful. In this new market, we need to educate our partners on how to build trusted data and agentic workflows using Reltio to ensure that they can take refined data strategies to their customers, leveraging our platform and our approach with context intelligence. So that's another important investment. And then we're expanding in new markets. We're going to be looking at ... Today, we've been really historically a North American EMEA based business, and there's other markets for us to go after with this value proposition.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. Performance and trust are the two criteria we hear a lot of. Agents are great until they make a mistake and everyone's like, whoa. But they want to have the trust, huge factor.
Alyson Welch
>> You can't get anywhere in the C-suite without being able to prove that you're a trusted partner and that you bring high quality. And I think Manish and the team have really established that with some key customers. So it's been an incredible journey. And the releases and the investments that we're making in our roadmap are tremendous. We are earmarking a new category. We're calling it context and intelligence and you'll see that throughout the narrative, but you see it also being mimicked by others in the market.
John Furrier
>> I mean, Google's architecture has a compliance layer and then an intelligence layer and context and intent are the two words they're using a lot of here.
Alyson Welch
>> If anyone needs context, I would imagine its people like you who are talking to different companies and concepts.
John Furrier
>> We get a lot of context.
Alyson Welch
>> You get a lot of context.
John Furrier
>> We see a lot of that.
Alyson Welch
>> Context switching probably.
John Furrier
>> We've seen the stories all over the place. No, but it's a good story. I mean, agents are going to break through, we believe the enterprise this year, because coding happened that last year, and you started seeing a lot more coding. The search and the marketing stuff has been the first adopter, but when coding broke through the enterprise, the CFOs were seeing real demand and results. So we think agents will come in faster. What do you think?
Alyson Welch
>> I think so too. I think so too. I think, I mean, the CFO is in an interesting spot because they are worried about the bottom line at the end of the day, right? And you have to have a margin math that makes sense. So these AI plays have to work out in terms of business outcomes. We're operationalizing real outcomes with our customers. You see, we're not piloting. We have agentic use cases in place launched with a number of key brands who are willing to talk about it with us publicly.
John Furrier
>> I remember the days when the big data movement 17 years ago with Hadoop, there was a discussion around data on the balance sheet with the CFOs. Now the data value is revenue generating. So it's not so much the data asset on the balance sheet. It's the data value unlock.
Alyson Welch
>> It's what can you do with the data?
John Furrier
>> What you do with the data, and that's driving revenue. We're seeing some examples there.
Alyson Welch
>> And we're creating new products out of it. So it's fun to see our customers doing things with our agentic, we call it agent flow platform, building agents to better govern their data or better manage their data, and then we're able to create ... It adds to our roadmap.
John Furrier
>> Agent flow great name because when the customer gets into the flow state.
Alyson Welch
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> My kids use that-
Alyson Welch
>> Are you a yoga guy?
John Furrier
>> My kid's like, "Dad, you got to get into the flow state." I'm like, "Okay, God. Yeah."
Alyson Welch
>> Are you?
John Furrier
>> Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.
Alyson Welch
>> Thanks. That was great.
Alison Kosik
>> Thanks a lot, Alyson. All right. You've been watching The Cube, the leader in live technology coverage. We're going to be right back.
Alison Kosik
John Furrier