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$HEX · The Death of Data Gatekeeping: AI Makes Everyone An Analyst | Hex Cofounder

now playing · $HEX

Hex dissolves standalone AI team to embed AI natively across all product teams

Barry McCardel argues AI must be intrinsic to the core product, not a bolted-on add-on; dissolving the separate 'Magic' AI team and making every PM/engineer AI-fluent creates comp…

$HASHBOARDbullish· medium· posbarry mccardel

Hex acquires Hashboard to accelerate semantic layer and context studio roadmap

Hashboard's BI tool expertise and team accelerated Hex's semantic modeling agents and context management tooling, validating the acquisition strategy despite M&A risks.

$OPENAIbullish· mediumbarry mccardel

OpenAI O-series models unlocked agentic reasoning for data analysis agents

The O-series models from OpenAI, alongside Anthropic's 3.5/3.7/4 series, provided the step-change in agentic reasoning and tool-calling that made Hex's notebook agent and Threads…

$ANTHROPICbullish· highbarry mccardel

Anthropic's Claude leads on coding via data flywheel with Cursor and Claude Code

Anthropic bet early on coding capability, attracting Cursor and building Claude Code, creating a self-reinforcing data flywheel of developer tokens that keeps them ahead on Sweetb…

$CURSORbullish· mediumbarry mccardel

Cursor's success with Anthropic models fuels coding data flywheel

Cursor's adoption of Claude for AI coding created a token volume flywheel that reinforces Anthropic's coding lead, a dynamic Hex observes closely as they build similar agentic dat…

$GOOGL···bearish· mediumbarry mccardel

Google Gemini lacks external developer flywheel vs Anthropic on coding benchmarks

Gemini 3.0 leads on some benchmarks but trails Claude on Sweetbench coding because Google lacks the external developer ecosystem (Cursor, Claude Code) that feeds Anthropic a codin…

$FIG···bullish· highbarry mccardel

Figma's cloud-native architecture (no separate cloud team) is model for AI-native org design

Figma never had a 'cloud team' — cloud was the water they swam in. Hex applies this analogy to AI: dissolve the AI team, make every team AI-fluent, avoiding Sketch's fate of bolti…

$SKETCHbearish· mediumbarry mccardel

Sketch's separate cloud team failed vs Figma's cloud-native approach; lesson for AI org design

Sketch treated cloud as a separate team/silo, causing slow integration; Figma made cloud the default substrate. Hex uses this to justify dissolving its standalone AI team and embe…

$FIVETRANbullish· mediumbarry mccardel

Fivetran acquires dbt Labs to pursue postmodern data stack with Iceberg

The Fivetran-dbt merger represents consolidation in the matured modern data stack and a bet on open table formats (Iceberg) enabling data sovereignty and modular query engines, re…

$DATABRICKSbearish· lowbarry mccardel

Databricks similarly exposed to Iceberg disruption of warehouse lock-in

As a data platform wanting to own and lock in the full stack, Databricks faces the same structural threat from open Iceberg architectures that decouple storage from compute.

$DBTbullish· mediumbarry mccardel

dbt Labs acquired by Fivetran to enable Iceberg-based postmodern data stack

dbt's semantic modeling and transformation layer combined with Fivetran's ingestion creates a package for adopting open Iceberg architecture, giving customers leverage over cloud…

$SNOW···bearish· mediumbarry mccardel

Snowflake's 76% product margins vulnerable to Iceberg-driven query engine competition

Cloud data warehouses like Snowflake capture excessive margins (76% product margin) by locking in data; open Iceberg formats on S3 enable modular query engines that will compete o…

$PLTR···bullish· highbarry mccardel

Palantir's forward-deployed engineering model created founder factory via Darwinian product search

Palantir sent real engineers to customer sites (war zones, factories) to build solutions that fed back into the core platform (Foundry), creating a venture-style search function t…