Issue #95: If You’re Investing in a Data Warehouse for AI, You’ve Already Missed the Point
Howdy 👋🏾
Often in my consulting work, I walk into a large business or enterprise and hear how they’re investing tons of money into Snowflake or Databricks to build this amazing data warehouse or data lake that will feed their AI. Hearing this makes me shake my head. Because if this is you, you’re missing the point.
When I started saying this to clients and prospects last year, my reasoning sounded much more abstract. But OpenClaw, and the broader push to build high-grade enterprise tools that connect your systems, is starting to bring all of this into focus.
The value of AI isn’t in centralizing your data. It’s in accessing it, and more importantly, acting on it.
If you practice good data hygiene and can access the APIs of the systems that already store your data, you can create connectors that pull and interact with that data directly. Now, this doesn’t negate data lakes entirely. There are still tons of valid use cases. But the true value is the next step: taking action.
It’s the difference between knowing you’re running low on inventory and automatically placing the order with your suppliers. Seeing a prospect visited your website and drafting a personalized follow-up pulled from your CRM and emails. Flagging an emergency support ticket and using AI tools to triage, resolve, and route it, without waiting on a human to step in.
This takes API orchestration. And that orchestration, using skills, MCP servers, or app connectors, is the real power. NVIDIA’s release of new tools like NemoClaw and its Agent Toolkit starts to put secure enterprise tools in businesses’ hands to build this agentic and actionable layer we’ve dreamed of. If you have already started to put those data warehouse dollars into making more of your data accessible and actionable, you’re ahead of the curve. You’re likely seeing the opportunity to do things that put you far ahead of the pack in ways others can only dream of.
The companies that win with AI won’t be the ones with the biggest data warehouse. They’ll be the ones with smart connectors that let AI work while their teams sleep.
-jason
🎙️What is OpenClaw, Really?
Speaking of OpenClaw — if that’s new to you, I’d recommend checking out my recent conversation with Marcus Penny. We get into what this new wave of “agentic AI” actually looks like in practice, from building a persistent AI assistant that manages his email, tasks, and projects, to what happens when AI can act on its own without constant input. It’s a great example of how these tools aren’t just saving time, but actually changing how we work and how present we can be day to day.
🔗 Best In Tech This Week
🔌 Skills are the new SaaS – The original bet was that enterprises would build agents and we’d just use them. What’s actually happening is people want their own agents, with their own personality and memory, connected to the systems they already use. For businesses, that means an agent sitting on top of your ERP, CRM, and project tools that can finally do what used to require three people and a spreadsheet: correlating data across platforms that were never designed to talk to each other.
⛽️ The AI gas meter is spinning – Every prompt, every response, every automated workflow burns tokens, and as AI scales across your org, so does the cost. The fix is simpler than most people realize: not every task needs a frontier model. Sorting email, summarizing a doc, answering routine questions, you don’t need Claude Opus for that. Tiered AI, matching the model to the task, might be the most underrated cost strategy in the room right now. It’s what lets you expand access across the org instead of cutting usage just to save at the pump.
🎤 The AI Roadshow: Workshops, Talks & Beyond
April 9 – Chesapeake Regional Workforce Summit
April 20-24 – Black Is Tech Conference | Houston, TX
May 4-8 – Philly Tech Week
May 14 – WTCI AGILE Series
📕The AI Evolution
I wrote The AI Evolution as a practical guide for leaders, builders, and anyone interested in learning how to use AI effectively. This book is about clarity, strategy, and what it takes to bring AI into your organization.
If you’re an executive trying to shape AI strategy, a manager looking to empower your team, or a developer wondering how this shift will change your craft, this book was written with you in mind. Purchase your copy here.
P.S. Before we go …
When I talk about Physical AI, I mean the convergence of AI with the physical world: autonomous vehicles, environmental sensors, industrial systems, robots with real agency in real spaces.
Which brings me to this gem: a robot at a hot pot restaurant in Cupertino recently got a little too into its dance routine, sending plates and chopsticks flying, and had to be physically restrained by three employees.
So yes, Physical AI does technically include a robot deciding to go rogue on a dining table. It’s just probably not the deployment model your enterprise is targeting.
