Managing data efficiently is crucial for enterprises, especially when it comes to leveraging AI. Without reliable data management, AI falls short of its potential. Yet, optimizing data workflows remains a challenge—one that Altimate AI is aiming to simplify with the help of agentic AI technology.
San Francisco-based startup Altimate AI today announced the launch of DataMates, an AI-driven solution designed to assist enterprise data teams by automating a variety of time-consuming tasks. DataMates aims to lighten the load on overstretched teams by accelerating data documentation, testing, and performance optimization, making it easier for businesses to manage their data operations more effectively. These tasks are critical for supporting not only AI initiatives but also business intelligence, daily operations, and data analytics. However, as the volume of data continues to grow, staffing levels remain stagnant, creating a pressing need for solutions like DataMates.
Founded in 2022, Altimate AI has received backing from John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco and head of JC2 Ventures, which has invested in the company. Altimate AI is already known for its DataPilot platform, which offers data automation capabilities, and the new DataMates service will integrate with this platform to further streamline enterprise data operations.
“Many data teams are overwhelmed because of the sheer amount of work, with numerous AI and analytics projects constantly in the pipeline,” said Pradnesh Patil, CEO and co-founder of Altimate AI, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We started Altimate AI with the vision of speeding up and automating their workflow.”
DataMates operates as a virtual assistant for data teams, performing tasks that are often repetitive and labor-intensive for human workers. Tasks such as data documentation, testing, and transformations, which typically require manual input, can now be handled autonomously by AI agents. Unlike traditional automation scripts, DataMates uses agentic AI to understand the full context of a company’s data environment, allowing it to execute tasks with a level of precision akin to human experts.
According to Patil, the system’s contextual awareness enables DataMates to handle complex data tasks with more nuance than standard automation tools, adding significant value to enterprise data operations.
At the core of DataMates is a proprietary framework that combines multiple language models, function calling mechanisms, and a custom knowledge graph to streamline data tasks.
“We’ve built our own in-house framework for many aspects of this technology,” explained Anand Gupta, CTO and co-founder of Altimate AI. While Altimate AI also leverages commercial large language models (LLMs), Gupta emphasized that the company’s agentic AI framework is mostly built in-house.
This sophisticated architecture enables DataMates to perform a variety of tasks, including:
Data model drafting
Automated documentation
Test generation and execution
Code review and optimization
Performance analysis and tuning
Data professionals can easily integrate DataMates into their existing workflows using tools like VSCode, Git, and Slack, allowing the AI agents to work alongside team members as virtual teammates.
“These AI teammates work within the tools that data teams are already using,” said Gupta. “You can assign them key tasks, and they’ll handle them autonomously, lightening your workload and speeding up project delivery.”
In addition to agentic AI, Altimate AI has introduced ambient AI—a continuous, intelligent monitoring system that analyzes the data infrastructure and proactively provides insights and recommendations. This allows data teams to focus on higher-level tasks, while the ambient AI ensures ongoing optimization in the background, without requiring constant intervention.
Altimate AI’s promise has attracted the interest of high-profile investors, including John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco and current head of JC2 Ventures. Chambers was introduced to Altimate AI through his son, who previously worked at Walmart Labs alongside Gupta.
Chambers sees a significant market opportunity in the company’s focus on improving the productivity of data engineers and data scientists, which he believes is an underserved market with substantial growth potential. “There are only a few startups really focusing on this,” Chambers said. “The big players are dabbling, but they haven’t moved, giving Altimate AI a first-mover advantage. It’s being led by people who have lived through these challenges, not just theorized about them.”
With the growing need for efficient data management across industries, Altimate AI is well-positioned to revolutionize how enterprise data teams operate—making workflows faster, smarter, and less labor-intensive through the power of agentic and ambient AI.
