This month on The Data T, we sit down with Erik Duffield, CEO and co-founder of Hakkoda, now an IBM Company, to unpack the latest hot topic in our industry: AI-ready data. Everyone’s talking about it, but what does it really take to build an AI-ready data team or data practice?

AI-readiness isn’t about the latest tool, it’s about a mindset shift. Duffield shares why data programs must now be designed for machines as primary consumers, how data governance has evolved from a blocker to an enabler, and why the speed of iteration, not a single big launch, is the real measure of success. Duffield touches on agentic AI in production, the future of data careers, and what 2026 may hold for both the AI market and enterprise adoption.

Co-hosted by Coalesce cofounders Armon Petrossian and Satish Jayanthi

Key topics:

What does an AI-ready data program look like?
Gaps between hype and reality in AI initiatives
What keeps data leaders up at night?
Data security concerns
Data team composition and reskilling for AI success
Labor force shifts and career progression challenges
How do you define and measure trusted, AI-ready data?
Top data trends and predictions for 2006

Resources:

About Hakkoda, an IBM Company: https://hakkoda.io/
About Coalesce: https://coalesce.io/

Coalesce is the only data transformation and governance platform designed for the AI era. Built on a metadata-driven framework, Coalesce gives data teams the speed to build and deploy transformations 10× faster—while enforcing the standards, structure, and governance needed to scale sustainably. With Coalesce Catalog, transformation and metadata management come together in a single solution, enabling discovery, trust, and collaboration across the business. Whether accelerating AI-assisted migrations from legacy tools or future-proofing enterprise data architectures, Coalesce provides the guardrails and efficiency to keep data teams AI-ready.

The AI-Ready Data Team with Erik Duffield